Copyright by Phillip Weston Stokes 2017
Copyright by Phillip Weston Stokes 2017
THE DISSERTATION COMMITTEE FOR PHILLIP WESTON STOKES CERTIFIES THAT THIS IS THE APPROVED VERSION OF THE FOLLOWING DISSERTATION:
A HISTORICAL GRAMMAR OF CASE IN ARABIC
Committee:
Kristen Brustad, Supervisor
John Huehnergard
Na’ama Pat-El
Danny Law
Ahmad Al-Jallad A HISTORICAL GRAMMAR OF CASE IN ARABIC
BY
PHILLIP WESTON STOKES
DISSERTATION
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
AUGUST 2017
DEDICATION
أﺣﻦ إﻟﻰ ﻟﻤﺴﺔ أﻣﻲ... To the memory of my beloved mother, Lynda Marie Danner, whose unconditional and steadfast love, support and encouragement made me believe I could do anything to which I set my mind; and whose love of learning about others inspired my own.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I graduated high school second to last in my class, and was certainly one of the last students my teachers at the time would have expected to achieve much academic success, let alone complete a Ph.D. at a prestigious research university. That I have is due to the contributions of many. My professors at Carson-Newman University pushed me to see that academic success was possible, combining the academic rigour and personal care for students that I hope to emulate. I came to the field of Arabic linguistics later than many of my colleagues, after completing my undergraduate studies and three years of seminary. In 2011, my wife and I moved to Amman, Jordan so I could pursue a M.A. in Arabic at the University of Jordan. During our two years there, I developed fluency in Arabic thanks to the countless Jordanians who welcomed us into their homes, invited me for late-night outings to coffee shops, and put up with my seemingly endless list of questions about a particular word’s use or the acceptability of a certain expression. On this side of this process, I am more convinced than ever that for someone to complete a graduate degree and enjoy a career devoted to a specialized field, they must have a passion that transcends the theoretical.
My experiences with Jordanians (and others) in Jordan and Palestine gave me a true love of the people of the Middle East, their cultures and the Arabic language. I will always be grateful for that gift. As a scholar and thinker, I have grown more during my time at UT Austin than at any other time in my life. Thanks go first and foremost to Kristen Brustad and Mahmoud Al-Batal for taking a chance on a guy whose application featured an email address with the word ‘football.’ They encouraged and supported me from day one. As my supervisor, v Kristen deserves special thanks. She gave me the room to explore interests and ideas, discussing them endlessly with me, even when she disagreed. Before my first semester, I withdrew from another course so that I could register for Na’ama Pat-El’s comparative Semitics course. That turned out to be a decision that would shape the course of not only my time at UT, but also one that influenced the path of my future career. Na’ama pushed me to think critically and employ rigorous methodology. I went on to take multiple courses with her, and even when not enrolled in her classes, I have spent hours sitting in her office talking through some idea or another. This dissertation, and my work in general, owes a great deal to her influence. I thank John Huehnergard for constantly modeling the highest scholarship, all while being imminently approachable and affable. I would also like to thank Danny Law, whose talent for exploring the implications of the methodology we use has (hopefully) left its mark on my work in this dissertation and beyond. Lastly, my colleagues at UT have all been tremendously supportive and encouraging. There are too many to name here, but Tom Leddy-Cecere, Jason Schroepfer and Mike Turner deserve special mention for their friendship, encouragement and assistance throughout my program. Perhaps the most serendipitous experience I had during my time at UT was in
September 2014, when Na’ama Pat-El invited me to contribute to a conference in Frankfurt, Germany. My respondent at the conference was Dr. Ahmad Al-Jallad of Leiden University. We spent a good deal of time before and after talking, and became quick friends. It is hard to overstate how influential Ahmad’s ideas and work have been on my own, but perhaps the best way to illustrate it is to note that this dissertation and the ideas proposed therein reflect his influence more than any other person’s. His willingness to share of his intimate knowledge of pre-modern Arabic, and especially pre-Islamic vi epigraphica, is truly astounding. Through Ahmad, I also got connected with Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia at Leiden, and my colleagues Dr. Marijn van Putten, Dr. Benjamin Suchard, Fokelien Kootstra, and Chiara Della Puppa. Each has contributed so much to this dissertation, always being willing to discuss any aspect. Special thanks are due to both Bejmain Suchard, who made many helpful suggestions and corrections to my thinking, and especially Marijn van Putten, who so graciously gave of his time and deep insight to improve many aspects of this dissertation. Were I to express my debt to these colleauges for some insight discussed in the pages of this dissertation, I would footnote every page. Finally, I thank my family and friends, who kept me sane during many stressful days and nights of writing. I would like especially to thank Rick Tyler, who has encouraged me and supported me in more ways than I can count over the past 8 years. My dad and my wife’s family have also been incredibly supportive throughout my Ph.D journey. I should most especially thank my wife, Rachel, whose willingness to move to the Middle East without ever having visited, based solely on the possibility that all my crazy plans might work, has made our dream a reality. She endured more than anyone the side effects of this demanding process, and did so with grace and love. The motivation and inspiration to complete the journey she provided is second only to that of our son,
Luke Tyler, about whom I have thought every second of this process (even before he had a name). There were many times over the past year, sitting at my computer late at night that I contemplated throwing in the towel, but seeing my sweet son’s smile was always the motivation I needed to continue. Ultimately, I am only here because of, and thanks to, my momma, Lynda Danner, the biggest supporter and best friend I’ve ever known. This dissertation is, like all of my work, dedicated with love to her memory. vii A HISTORICAL GRAMMAR OF CASE IN ARABIC
Phillip Weston Stokes, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2017
Supervisor: Kristen Brustad
The dissertation provides a description of the diachronic development of nominal case marking in Arabic. It does so by integrating all available Arabic data, including especially newly identified corpora of Arabic dating to the pre-Islamic (pre-7th century
CE) period. The dissertation provides the first synthesis of attestations of case in this epigraphic data, detailing the complexity and diversity already attested in the pre-Islamic period. Then, the dissertation treats the topic of case in the Qurʾān by relying solely on the consonantal manuscripts (Arabic rasm), without reference to the later reading traditions. Having established the diversity of case marking in the pre-Islamic period, the dissertation then proposes a new framework for interpreting the heterogeneous corpora typically labeled ‘Middle Arabic.’ The dissertation argues, contrary to prevalent scholarly trends, that these corpora continue pre-Islamic linguistic traditions. Finally, the dissertation addresses numerous relics of the case system attested in modern dialects, offering the first detailed diachronic explanations for several of them. Ultimately, the dissertation provides both the first comprehensive study of case across all attested varieties of Arabic, as well as a proposal for reframing our study of the relationships of these attested corpora. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables ...... xii Abbreviations ...... xiii Sigla ...... xiii Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1
1.1 Semitic and Arabic Case: Evidence and Reconstruction ...... 10 1.1.2 Diptotes ...... 15 1.2 Outline ...... 16 Chapter 2 - Pre-Seventh Century Arabic ...... 19
2.1 Loss of Nunation ...... 21 2.2 Safaitic ...... 22 2.3 Ḥismaic ...... 28 2.4 Classical Nabataean ...... 30 2.4.1 ʿĒn ʿAvdat ...... 30 2.5 Late Nabataean ...... 35 2.5.1 JSNab 17 ...... 35 2.5.2 Namāra ...... 37 2.6 Wawation ...... 40 2.7 Onomastic Evidence ...... 43 2.8 - 6th Century Arabic ...... 48 2.8.1 Jabal Says ...... 49 2.8.2 Petra Papyri ...... 50 2.9 Comparative Discussion ...... 53 2.10 Conclusion ...... 63 Chapter 3: Case in the Qurʾānic Consonantal Text (QCT) ...... 65
3.1 Introduction - What is the QCT? ...... 65 3.2 Debates Over Language of the Qurʾān ...... 65 3.2.1 Language Variety Behind the Qurʾānic Rasm ...... 66 3.2.2 Approach of This Study ...... 69 3.3 Loss of Nunation ...... 70 3.4 Case in the QCT ...... 72 3.4.1 Dual and Plural Nouns ...... 73 3.4.2 The Five Nouns ...... 73 3.4.3 Indefinite Accusative ...... 75 3.4.3.1 Q33 and Final Alif Spellings ...... 76 ix 3.4.4 Orthography of Final āʾ Sequences ...... 79 3.4.5 aʾ Nouns ...... 81 3.5 Analysis of Case Distribution in QCT ...... 83 3.6 Alternative Interpretations ...... 87 3.7 Language Variety of the QCT ...... 91 3.8 Variety of QCT in Context of pre-Islamic Arabic ...... 93 Chapter 4: Case Marking in Middle Arabic Texts ...... 96
4.1. Introduction: What is Middle Arabic? ...... 96 4.1.1 Linguistic Nature of MA texts ...... 96 4.1.2 Corpora ...... 103 4.2 Case in MA Literature ...... 106 4.2.1 Absence of Morphosyntactic Case ...... 109 4.2.1.1 Early Judaeo-Arabic (Blau and Hopkins 1987: §II) ...... 112 4.2.1.2 Classical Judaeo-Arabic Texts and Letters ...... 113 4.2.2 CA Case ...... 115 4.2.3 Non-Classical Case Marking ...... 121 4.2.3.1 Yemeni JA ...... 122 4.2.3.2 Accusative Singular (Tanwīn Alif) in MA: A Functional Analysis ...... 123 4.2.4 Blau’s Framework for Case in Islamic Period ...... 141 4.2.5 Accusative in Semitic and Classical Arabic ...... 146 4.2.5.1 Accusative Marking Nominal Predicates ...... 147 4.2.5.2 Accusative and Existential Predication ...... 153 4.2.5.3 Accusative Marking and Passive Verbs ...... 165 4.3 MA Accusative - A New Proposal ...... 173 4.4 Conclusions ...... 181 Chapter 5: Dialectal Tanwīn ...... 183
5.1 Introduction ...... 183 5.2 Data ...... 185 5.2.1 N-Vn + Adj ...... 186 5.2.2 N-Vn + Attributive Verbal Clause ...... 190 5.2.3 N-Vn + Prepositional Phrase ...... 193 5.2.4 Other Syntactic Functions ...... 194 5.3 Possibility One – Etymological Tanwīn ...... 196 5.3.1 Tihāma DT ...... 196 5.3.2 Adverbial Uses of DT ...... 200 x 5.3.3 Historical Discussion of Tanwīn ...... 203 5.4 Possibility Two: Etymological *han ...... 220 5.5 Conclusion ...... 230 Chapter 6: Case Remnants and Final Short Vowels in Modern Arabic Dialects ... 235
6.1 Introduction ...... 235 6.2 Adverbial -a and other Remnants of Accusative ...... 236 6.3 Singular Pronominal Suffixes and Case Vowels ...... 239 6.4 Excursus on Other Short Vowels in Modern Arabic Dialects ...... 258 6.5. Conclusion ...... 264 Chapter 7: Conclusions ...... 268
Works Cited ...... 276
xi LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Old Babylonian (Huehnergard and Woods 2004: 242)………………………... 11 Table 2: Amarna Canaanite (Kossmann 1989: 46) ………………………………………11 Table 3: Ugaritic (Tropper 2000: 338)…………………………………………………...11 Table 4: Classical Arabic ………………………………………………………………..11 Table 5: Ethiopic (Weninger 2011: §4.4.2) ……………………………………………...12 Table 6: Proto-Semitic Case (modified from Huehnergard 2004: 149) …………………13 Table 7: Evidence for Case in Safaitic …………………………………………………..28 Table 8: Evidence for Case in Ḥismaic ………………………………………………….30 Table 9: Evidence for Case in ʿĒn ʿAvdat ……………………………………………….35 Table 10: Evidence for Case in JSNab 17 ……………………………………………….37 Table 11: Evidence for Case in Namāra Inscription …………………………………….39 Table 12: Comparative Evidence for Case in Pre-7th Century Arabic …………………53 Table 13: Pausal Distribution in Tihāma Arabic Dialects ……………………………..200 Table 14: Proto-Arabic Singular Pronominal Suffixes …………………………………241 Table 15: Levantine/N. African Singular Pronominal Suffixes ………………………..242 Table 16: Mesopotamian/Peninsular Pronominal Suffixes …………………………….252
xii ABBREVIATIONS
BH Biblical Hebrew CA Classical Arabic ChA Christian Arabic DT Dialectal Tanwīn JA Judaeo-Arabic MA Middle Arabic MxA Mixed Arabic
SIGLA
ASP Blau, Joshua. (1966-7). A Grammar of Christian Arabic based mainly on South Palestinian texts from the first millennium, 3 volumes. (= Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 267, 276, 279; Subsidia volumes 27-29). Louvain: Peeters. GAG von Soden, Wolfram. (1969). Grundriß der akkadischen Grammatik samt Ergänzungscheft. Analecta Orientalia 33, 47. Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum. JA Blau, Joshua. (1981). The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic: A Study of the Origins of Middle Arabic, 2nd edition. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East. Lane Lane, E.W. 1863-1893. An Arabic-English Lexicon. London: Williams and Norgate. Wright Wright, William. (1874-1896/2005). A Grammar of the Arabic Language, 2 volumes, 3rd edition. Mineola, NY: Dover.
xiii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
The goal of this dissertation is to produce a study of the diachronic development of morphosyntactic case marking in Arabic based on the latest available corpora. At first glance, the topic of the history and development of case in Arabic might not seem like the most obvious choice for a new study. After all, given that it has garnered such focused attention by scholars in both the native Arabic and western scholarly traditions,1 one can be forgiven for thinking that most of what can be said, has been said. However, virtually all previous studies have dealt with the same sets of data, namely Classical Arabic
(henceforth CA), especially the poetic tradition and the works of Arabic-language grammarians who codified CA during the 8th - 10th centuries CE, and the modern Arabic dialects. Many new discoveries, however, have added crucial data that has not yet been properly integrated into this discussion. Further, the narratives heretofore proposed by previous scholars to explain the historical developments of case marking have closely followed those of the earliest Islamic historians and grammarians. In this traditional historiography, case marking played a decisive role, and eventually a dichotomy of pre-
Islamic Arabic (equated with CA), which possessed case, and Islamic period Arabic which lost it, developed. Recent studies have convincingly demonstrated, however, that the narratives inherited from the Arabic grammatical tradition were the products of a particular intellectual and social climate. They reflect the interests and social realities of their context, mostly the 9th - 10th centuries CE, and thus their usefulness for modern
1 To name just a few: Nöldeke 1897, 1910; Vollers 1906; Brockelmann 1913; Diem 1973, 1991; Blau ASP, 1 history writing is debatable at best (Hoyland 2015; Webb 2016). As we will see, the evidence from the pre-Islamic period, as well as the Qurʾānic manuscript evidence, strongly contradicts this simplistic narrative.
A major aim of this dissertation is thus to begin the process of rewriting the linguistic history of Arabic; here, by sustained focus on the feature which has heretofore both framed and symbolized that narrative, namely morphosyntactic case marking. I hope to accomplish this goal through several contributions. First, I will integrate pre-Islamic epigraphic data fully into the discussion of the history and development of Arabic.
Second, I will address the topic of case in the Qurʾān by relying only on the consonantal text (Arabic rasm), and not on any subsequent reading tradition. Third, I will reframe the discussion of ‘Middle Arabic’ by examining the roles that the etymological accusative functions in Judaeo-Arabic and Christian Arabic literature. Fourth, I will offer a comprehensive study of the so-called ‘dialectal tanwīn,’ offering two possible explanations based on the data. Fifth, I will revisit several case-related features in the modern dialects, namely the adverbial suffix -a, as well as the vowels preceding the pronominal suffixes.
Perhaps the period in which the most new discoveries have brought forth data that promises to fundamentally change our understanding of Arabic language history is in the pre-Islamic (pre-7th century CE) period. Some of this data, mainly the inscriptions in the
Nabataean script from the southern Levant and NW Arabia, have already featured in some scholarly discussions of case in Arabic (cf. Diem 1973; Blau 1977). New discoveries, including especially an inscription from the late 1st/early 2nd century CE in 2 the Negev (ʿĒn ʿAvdat), challenge these scholars’ conclusions about this material in some fundamental ways. More significantly, several corpora of inscriptions in scripts labeled ‘Ancient North Arabian’ have turned out to represent continua of pre-Islamic
Arabic. The following isoglosses, characteristic of Arabic, which strongly argue in favor of including the Safaitic and Ḥismaic inscriptions in the canon of Arabic (Huehnergard
2017; Al-Jallad forthcoming a):
- Negative particles m */mā/; lʾn */lā-ʾan/ > CA lan; lm */lam/ - mafʿūl G-passive participle - Prepositions and adverbs, f, ʿn, ʿnd, ḥt, and ʿkdy - Subjunctive -a - t-demonstratives - Leveling of -at allomorph of the feminine ending - ʾn complementizer and subordinator - The use of f- to introduce modal clauses - Independent object pronoun (ʾ)y - Vestiges of nunation
One can also add the use of the suffix conjugation as an optative, rare elsewhere in
Semitic (Al-Jallad forthcoming a). The arguments against including these dialects in the canon of Arabic are, in my opinion, not convincing and rely primarily on the assumption that the definite article ʾal, which is but one variant in these inscription, is a genetic marker of Arabic (e.g., Macdonald 2000). Recent studies have shown this to be false (Al-
Jallad 2015a: §2.3; Pat-El 2009). At over 40,000 in number, the Safaitic evidence adds substantially to our knowledge of pre-Islamic Arabic.
I will also deal with the topic of case in the Qurʾān by relying solely on the consonantal text (Arabic rasm). Scholars have largely approached the Qurʾān through the
3 lens of the reading traditions (Arabic qirāʾāt). These reading traditions are of debatable relationship to the earliest recitation of the Qurʾān, but in any event are only documented beginning in the late 8th and 9th centuries CE (Shah 2009). While the reading traditions virtually all attest a CA-like case system, there are clear differences between them and the reality behind the consonantal text. Most scholars have followed the traditional explanation, namely that the earliest manuscripts are consistent with a CA-like language, but that orthographic peculiarities have obscured this match (Nöldeke 1910; Diem 1979-
83). Famously, Karl Vollers (1906) argued that the language behind the Qurʾānic consonantal text was the dialect of Mecca, which, he argued, was caseless. Subsequently, the text and reading traditions were classicized. I disagree with both of these approaches.
Rather, I suggest that the text be taken seriously as a representation of the language variety in which the Qurʾān was first performed. Contrary to traditional scholarship, I argue that the case system of this variety is not identical to that of CA because of several sound changes that led to a reduction in that system. However, unlike Vollers, I argue that the language behind the text, which very well may have reflected the local dialect, or at least a register similar to it, it nevertheless did possess some case.
It is worth pointing out that this debate about the nature of the language of the
Qurʾān highlights a common assumption, implicit in much of the scholarly discussions of case development in Arabic, which I believe has not been questioned forcefully enough.
In much scholarly discourse, case is seen as something that a language either possesses or does not, i.e., the language of the Qurʾān either possessed or did not possess case.
Federico Corriente (1971; 1973) and Joshua Blau (1976) famously dueled over whether 4 case loss was plausibly connected with its supposedly low functional load in Semitic, an idea which Corriente championed and Blau rejected (and still does; cf. 2006b §5). For
Blau, it was an especially important distinction because, for him, varieties with case were unintelligible to those without, and it was the loss of case that triggered a supposed shift from synthetic to analytic syntax. Corriente rejects the idea that they were unintelligible.
Neither scholar, however, considers the possibility that languages can have a reduced case compared with the ancestral system. As we will see in chapters 2, 3 and 4, however, this is precisely what it appears most Arabic dialects attested in the pre-modern period had. Thus in addition to considering factors that led to the loss of case, we must keep in mind the growing amount of evidence for reduced but functional systems with partial case marking.
Another major contribution of this dissertation concerns the historical narrative around which the linguistic history of Arabic has been heretofore told. Previous scholarship framed the development of case primarily as one of loss, and explained that loss against the background of sudden and widespread acquisition of Arabic by non- native speakers (cf. Blau 1977; Versteegh 1984). Only when non-natives entered the picture, it was argued, was Arabic case reduced and lost. As we will see, however, the epigraphic evidence speaks against this simplistic assumption. I will additionally argue that the language behind the QCT attests a reduced case system, in which case a variety with (partial) case loss is attested in western Arabia before the Islamic conquests. It is doubtful highly doubtful that non-native acquisition had anything to do with the developments attested in the Safaitic dialects, spoken and used primarily by nomads, or 5 in the Ḥijāz. I consciously avoid imposing any one particular historical narrative on the data in order to allow the complexity of the data to take center stage.
Perhaps the primary contributions of this dissertation are those to the study of
Islamic-era case reflexes. The longest chapter deals with the corpora of heterogenous texts called ‘Middle Arabic’ (chapter 4). Texts labeled ‘Middle Arabic’ were produced mainly by Christians and Jews during the pre-modern Islamic period (for more on which, see below). These corpora have steadily drawn more and more scholarly attention, to the point that now there is a bona fide scholarly sub-discipline devoted to ‘Middle Arabic’
(henceforth MA) studies (see the studies in Lentin 2008 for an overview of the range of contemporary scholarship). This scholarship has produced many important insights into the linguistic and literary range of Arabic throughout its documented history. However, I argue that the original framework within which the diachronic evaluation of linguistic features in these texts has been undertaken is outdated and unjustified. Blau (1966-7 =
ASP; 1981 = JA) has argued that ‘Middle Arabic’ represents a historical stage of Arabic, where the features characteristic of modern colloquial Arabic were forged. More recently, he has followed Fischer (1991) in arguing that Middle Arabic texts do not represent a separate stage of Arabic, but rather a mixture of CA and Neo-Arabic forms. In this formulation, any non-CA element is due either to colloquial influence, or imperfect acquisition of CA. In my chapter, however, I argue for a completely different framework for understanding the diachronic implications of these texts. By carefully examining the function of the accusative case in these texts, I will argue that they represent a non-CA register (or registers), and that non-CA distribution of the accusative case is due to 6 developments in natural language, antecedents for which are attested in CA and other
Semitic languages. This is not surprising, given the large and growing body of material from the pre-Islamic period that attests non-CA varieties and registers of Arabic, with various realizations of case, and also given that Arabic has been a living language all this time. Ultimately, I argue that the assumption that the characteristics of Middle Arabic literature originated in failed attempts to write CA is in most cases unwarranted.
Finally, this dissertation contributes significantly to the debates surrounding the developments behind the modern dialects. Traditionally, the dialects were held to be descendants of CA (or a classical-like dialect) (Blau 1977; Versteegh 1984, 1997).
Various historical scenarios, mostly introspective (that is, relying on historical imagination and the traditional historical framework rather than primary data) were proposed to account for the developments attested in the dialects, specifically the widespread trends that most dialects share (cf. Rabin 1955; Ferguson 1959; Corriente
1976; Versteegh 1984). Chief among these linguistic changes was the loss of case, which is ubiquitous in the modern dialects. More recently, several scholars, most notably
Jonathan Owens (2006) and Jan Retsö (1994; 2013) have championed a different perspective. Specifically, they have argued that the dialects not only do not descend from
CA (or a classical-like ancestor), but do not descend from an ancestor (or ancestors) that ever possessed case at all. For them, features typically interpreted as remnants of case in the modern dialects are reinterpreted, often simply retrojected back into the immediately pre-Islamic period with their contemporary function. While I disagree with these scholars’ arguments concerning the presence of case in the ancestor of Arabic dialects, 7 and argue thus in the following chapters, nevertheless they make important observations concerning the often vague, unsystematic proposals made by scholars in the traditional framework. Indeed many aspects of the development of features that purportedly originated in the case system have not yet received systematic explanation. That is the goal in chapters 5 and 6.
In chapter 5, I deal with ‘dialectal tanwīn,’ a morpheme typically realized in or an suffixed to morphologically indefinite nouns in a variety of pre-modern and modern
Arabic dialects. Most scholars (Baneth 1945; Blau JA; Fischer and Jastrow 1980;
Behnstedt 1987) have interpreted these morphemes as remnants of a frozen case vowel and tanwīn, that is, a n which originally marked the absolute (unbound) state on singular nouns, some broken plural patterns, and the feminine sound plural. Recently, Owens
(2006), followed by Holes (2011) and Ferrando (forthcoming), argued against this identification. Rather, these scholars suggest that the morpheme can be reconstructed with its current function, without appeal to case/tanwīn. The data are admittedly varied and ambiguous and admit of both the possibility that it is connected with tanwīn, as well as that it originates elsewhere. In one scenario, I will propose a brand new interpretation, namely that it possibly developed from the Semitic deictic *han, from which the definite article in Arabic also developed. In a second scenario, I will propose a series of developments that more accurately accounts for a possible origin in, and development from tanwīn than is proposed by, e.g., Blau JA.
In the final chapter (6), I will address a variety of features traditionally connected with remnants of case markers. Particularly, I will examine adverbs and adverbial phrases 8 marked by final suffixed a, almost universally held to originate in the indefinite accusative *an. I will then devote a good deal of space to discussing the vowels preceding the pronominal suffixes in the modern Arabic dialects. These vowels are also almost universally believed to reflect frozen and harmonized case vowels (Cantineau
1937; Birkeland 1952; Fischer and Jastrow 1980; Diem 1991). Owens’ proposal, based on the belief that the modern dialects descended from varieties that lacked case, argues instead that they represent an ur-Semitic epenthetic vowel system. I will argue for the traditional account, although in doing so I will critique the vague reconstructions offered heretofore, and propose a set of developments that more accurately account for the data.
Owens’ proposal will be rejected, as it does not account for the distribution of these vowels in any attested dialect. Finally, I devote a section to the issue of final short case vowels in Arabic, which have received only partial (and incomplete) historical discussion, which in turn has provided ammunition for Owens and others to argue against apparent final short vowel loss in the dialects. I will argue that most apparent exceptions have plausible explanations, but that some dialects may in fact attest the retention of final short *u. The implications of these discussions for our understanding to the loss of case will be discussed as well, and I will argue that regular phonetic loss of final short vowels alone is insufficient to explain case loss in those varieties.
Throughout this dissertation, I assume that all varieties of Arabic ultimately descend from the same ancestor, proto-Arabic, which I believe can be reconstructed with confidence as possessing a morphosyntactic case system. This proposal requires
9 demonstration, and it is to a discussion of this case system, and the evidence for it, that I now turn.
1.1 SEMITIC AND ARABIC CASE: EVIDENCE AND RECONSTRUCTION In this section I will review the evidence for case marking in the Semitic languages, and briefly discuss the reconstruction of these markers to the earliest possible point, dubbed proto-Semitic by most scholars, and to the same level for Arabic, usually termed proto-Arabic. First, however, a word about terminology is in order. In this work, the term case, following Blake 2004 (pp. 1-12) will be used to refer to the process of
“marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads” (ibid., 1).
These roles were originally marked morphosyntactically in Semitic by means of suffixed case markers. These case markers express grammatical relations, a term which refers to the syntactic relations, like subject, object, etc. (ibid., 2-3). In this dissertation, I will focus primarily on manifestations of the case markers that Arabic inherited from proto-
Semitic, and the relations that they represent. Except where indicated, I will not dedicate much space to the other ways in which languages typically express grammatical relations, e.g., word order.
A number of Semitic languages attest a case system that is remarkably similar in most details:
10 Table 1: Old Babylonian (Huehnergard and Woods 2004: 242)
Singular Dual Plural
Nominative u ā ū
Genitive i ī (< *ay) ī
Accusative a
Table 2: Amarna Canaanite (Kossmann 1989: 46)
Singular Plural
Nominative u u (< *ū)
Genitive i i (< *ī)
Accusative a
Table 3: Ugaritic (Tropper 2000: 338)
Singular Dual Plural
Nominative u ā ū
Genitive i ē (< *ay) ī
Accusative a
Table 4: Classical Arabic
Singular Dual Plural
Nominative u ā ū
Genitive i ay ī
Accusative a
11 Table 5: Ethiopic (Weninger 2011: §4.4.2)
Singular / Plural
Nominative/Genitive (or non-accusative) Ø2 (< ə < *u,*i)
Accusative ä (*a)
In these languages, the nominative marks the subject of verbal and nominal sentences, and the predicates of base nominal sentences as well. The accusative has various functions, including marking the direct object, and a number of different adverbial functions (Huehnergard 2004: §3.3.2.3). The genitive is adnominal in Semitic, occurring in non-initial members of a construct3 chain, as well as after prepositions, regardless of the syntactic role of the noun in the sentence (Bar-Asher 2009: §1.6.2; Hasselbach 2013b:
222). Several other morphemes that are also occasionally described as cases include locative *um and terminative *isa/*asa (Huehnergard ibid.).
The high degree of similarity between these languages makes reconstruction of the following paradigm for proto-Semitic case virtually certain.
2 The ə (< *i,*u) is retained, however, before pronominal suffixes: kalb-ə-ka “your dog (non-ACC)” vs. kalb-a-ka “your dog (ACC).” 3 In Semitic, to express a phrase like “the house of the king,” the nouns “house” and “king” are juxtaposed, lit. “house king.” The head can also be a preposition, e.g., Arabic fī l-bayti “in the house,” as well as an adjective. When the head is a nominal form, its case is marked according to its syntactic role in the sentence, while each subsequent dependent nominal form is marked genitive. 12 Table 6: Proto-Semitic Case (modified from Huehnergard 2004: 149)
Singular Dual Plural
Nominative u ā ū
Genitive i ay ī
Accusative a
Several other Semitic languages, namely Hebrew and Aramaic, have vocalized traditions which provide glimpses into the realization of vowels at various points in their development, nevertheless do not attest a functional case system at any point in their history.4 Several aspects of Tiberian Hebrew Phonology are best explained by the initial presence of case vowels (see Suchard 2016), and both Hebrew and Aramaic bound pronominal forms attest forms best explained as frozen case vowels (Hasselbach 2013b:
204-5). Early Phoenician dialects attest the case system reconstructed above, and even after nominative and accusative merge, genitive is attested until the 7th century (ibid.,
215). Finally, other Semitic languages written in defective scripts5 without vocalized traditions, like Ancient South Arabian, also attest case inflection in the dual and plural
(Stein 2011; Al-Jallad and Van Putten forthcoming).
4This statement could be qualified depending on one’s view of the genetic status of the inscriptions from ancient Samʾal, which attest an active distinction on plural nouns between nominative
Akkadian šarr-um “king (nom),” and that suffixed to the dual and plural was n, e.g.,
Classical Arabic muslimūna “Muslims (mpl).” In Arabic, the n from the dual and plural paradigms was levelled to the singular paradigm as well, and will be referred to in this dissertation by the Arabic terms nunation and tanwīn.
As is clear from the paradigm listed in Classical Arabic above, the case system represented in CA is identical to the one reconstructible to proto-Semitic,6 and we can thus confidently reconstruct it to proto-Arabic as well (Huehnergard 2017). The discussions in the following chapters will thus assume this distribution as the origin of all subsequent features. Describing and explaining differences and discrepancies between the system presented here and the data attested in the attested corpora will constitute the primary goal of this dissertation. While the nature of the pre-modern data will naturally favor discussion of the more mechanistic aspects of development, I will nevertheless attempt wherever possible to raise questions of possible functional impetuses behind those developments.
6 There are numerous debates among specialists about possible antecedents to the paradigm presented above, and these are often projected back into a pre-proto Semitic period (cf. Hasselbach 2013b: 205, n.7). 14 1.1.2 Diptotes The case system described above, reconstructed for both proto-Arabic and proto-
Semitic, holds in the vast majority of cases in languages with case attested. In Arabic and
Ugaritic, however, several nominal patterns attest a slightly different pattern of case marking. Whereas most nouns show the tripartite case distinction (nominative u, genitive i accusative a) on most singular nouns, a few others have only nominative u and oblique a. Because they inflect for only two cases, these patterns are referred to as diptotes, and those that inflect for all three cases are called triptotes. This pattern of diptotes is slightly different from that seen with plurals, which mark only nominative and oblique, but where the oblique is marked by long ī instead of ā. Duals are also considered diptotes, distinguishing between nominative ān and oblique ayn. The diptote patterns of duals and plurals are clearly proto-Semitic (Huehnergard 2004). The diptote realization on the singular nouns (nominative u and oblique a), however, is not attested in Akkadian, but only in Ugaritic and Arabic, so it is apparently a Central Semitic innovation (cf. also
Hasselbach 2013: §2.3.2). In Arabic, which developed a definite article, nouns that are diptotic when indefinite show triptotic inflection when the definite article is prefixed.
Finally, diptotic nouns in Arabic lack nunation, a fact that will be relevant in the sequencing of sound changes in several corpora, as we will see below.
The evidence for diptotic inflection in Ugaritic comes primarily from syllabic transliterations of Ugaritic, most (though not all) of which are personal names
(Hasselbach 2013: §2.2.2). The most common nominal patterns that are treated as diptotes in Ugaritic end in the suffixes ān, ēn, īn and ūn, though the feminine at on
15 personal names is treated thus as well in, e.g., (CAT 1.40:36, apud Huehnergard 2012:
40) ẖāmiyātu ʾugarita “the walls of Ugarit.” In Classical Arabic, a number of diptotic patterns are attested, including the comparative/superlative ʾafʿalu, nouns suffixed with
ān, and various broken plural patterns (cf. faʿālilu and faʿlāʾu). In common with Ugaritic, names in CA are often diptotic if they consist of more than three consonants, e.g.,
Zaynabu, as well as nouns ending in the feminine singular *at, e.g., Makkatu “Mecca” and Fuṭaymatu (Fischer 2002: §153).
Nouns that are diptotic will feature in a number of discussions below, including in the pre-Islamic evidence from the Nabataean inscriptions (chapter 2), the Qurʾānic consonantal text (QCT) (chapter 3), as well as the distribution of modern ‘dialectal tanwīn’ (chapter 5). The evidence for diptotes outside of CA, in addition to its presence in Ugaritic, confirms its reality as a linguistic feature. Differences in its distribution across the corpora in which it is attested will be noted throughout.
1.2 OUTLINE This dissertation is organized around corpora, arranged in a basically chronological order. I begin in chapter 2 with a synthesis of the relevant data from the epigraphic corpus, which includes texts and inscriptions written in Ancient North
Arabian, Nabataean, and Greek scripts. In the third chapter, I will treat the topic of case in the Qurʾānic consonantal text, relying solely on evidence from the manuscript tradition
(primarily the Cairo edition produced in the early 20th century). The fourth chapter is devoted to the topic of ‘Middle Arabic,’ which I problematize from a conceptual and theoretical perspective. In terms of case, I will focus on one feature, the (etymological) 16 accusative case, represented by a suffixed alif. We will see that it came to mark several syntactic functions that it did not (or only rarely) marked in the common Semitic, and proto-Arabic, case system. I will argue against the traditional interpretation of its distribution, which has been that they are failed attempts to represent CA
(hypercorrections and hypocorrections), arguing instead that they represent natural developments for which there are antecedents in previous corpora. By doing so, I hope to lay the foundation for a more sensitive and accurate analysis of the heterogeneous corpus called ‘Middle Arabic.’
The final two chapters focus primarily on case marking relics in the modern dialects. Chapter 5 will address ‘dialectal tanwīn, which has heretofore been explained as remnants of etymological tanwīn and a frozen case vowel. I will propose two possibilities. One is that the etymology is rather from the deictic *han, and that the process that created the contemporary distribution is ultimately related to that which created the definite article, from the same etymon. Alternatively, I will review evidence supporting the traditional interpretation. I will argue that, if it is indeed from etymological tanwīn, the previous diachronic accounts have not adequately accounted for the details of its form and distribution. I will propose modifications that, I believe, better account for those details in the most economical way. Chapter 6 will deal two kinds of case-system remnants in the modern dialects. First, I will deal with the adverbial a suffix on frozen adverbs in most modern dialects. Second, I will discuss the vowels preceding the pronominal suffixes in the dialects. I will argue in favor of the traditional interpretation of these vowels as frozen case vowels, and demonstrate the improbability 17 of any epenthetic explanation. As with dialectal tanwīn, I will argue that the traditional accounts have not convincingly accounted for the details of the dialectal distribution, and will propose other more probable explanations. The final chapter is a conclusion highlighting the important issues and contributions from the dissertation, as well as thoughts on future work.
18 CHAPTER 2 - PRE-SEVENTH CENTURY ARABIC
In chapter 1, I outlined the comparative Semitic evidence for case, and I further argued that the case system preserved in CA is very close to what must have been the situation at the proto-Arabic stage. This chapter addresses the question of what case looked like in the pre-Islamic examples of Arabic that are so far available. I will treat the rasm of the Qurʾān in the next chapter (3) due to the fact that it falls chronologically at the border of the pre- and Islamic periods, and also because the data and discussion deserve a focused investigation. This chapter will therefore treat the data from inscriptions in some of the Ancient North Arabian (henceforth ANA) scripts, specifically
Safaitic and Ḥismaic. It will further treat the evidence written in the Nabataean Aramaic script and transliterations of Arabic data into the Greek script. Finally, I will examine the three sixth century CE inscriptions from southern Syria, which most epigraphists consider the earliest examples of inscriptions in the Arabic script; that is, the earliest examples of the stage of the Nabataean script which formed the basis for the writing traditions of the earliest Islamic period.
There are several challenges that face a study of case marking in the pre-Islamic epigraphic record, primarily due to the nature of the writing systems used to write Arabic in this period. The ANA scripts, Safaitic and Ḥismaic, are consonantal, meaning they do not represent short or long vowels by means of matres lectionis. Thus detecting the presence or absence of case, marked as we have seen by short and long vowels suffixed to nominals in Arabic, can only be accomplished indirectly in most cases. With the
19 Nabataean script we are fortunate in that, given that vowel length in word-final position seems to have been neutralized, originally short and long vowels are all represented word-finally (see section 2.4).
That does not mean, however, that there are no challenges when dealing with
Arabic material written in Nabataean. The script and conventions were originally associated with the kingdom of Nabataea, centered in Petra in southern Jordan, but which stretched from NW Arabia north to southern Syria, and westward across the Negev to the
Mediterranean coast. Originally, the script and writing conventions were probably governed by a scribal school, to which other small kingdoms and governments might have sent scribes to train (Nehmé 2017). Eventually, with the downfall of the Nabataean kingdom, the Nabataean script would have developed in different ways in the various areas formerly under Nabataean influence (Al-Jallad: forthcoming b). Further, Arabic material is attested in both monumental inscriptions as well as graffiti. Thus one must consider the context of the data and the possibility that different variants of Nabataean writing stand behind data from different periods and locales.
Finally, we are fortunate to have Arabic material attested in Greek transliteration precisely because, unlike the ANA scripts, and to a lesser degree the Nabataean and early
Arabic script, all vowels, phonemically long and short, are indicated in the Greek script.
These transliterations provide a great deal of evidence for the phonology of the dialects of the region (Al-Jallad 2017). Nevertheless, in many cases these examples consist of personal names, which are often Hellenized by suffixing Greek case inflection to the name, e.g., Αβδαλλας for ʿabdallah. Due to this practice, it is often impossible to 20 determine whether a particular name, or otherwise common noun, would have been inflected for case or not.
Despite these challenges, we can nevertheless detect patterns of case marking in these corpora. In the rest of this chapter I will examine the various dialect groups attested in these sources, synthesize what evidence for case can be detected given the limitations of the data and scripts, and finally discuss the diachronic implications. We will see that no one set of developments can account for all of the manifestations of case in the epigraphic and documentary evidence from this period. Rather, multiple systems of case are attested.
2.1 LOSS OF NUNATION All varieties attested in the pre-Islamic epigraphic record share one development from the nominal inflection system reconstructed for PA, namely the absence of nunation. While some scholars (e.g., Bellamy 1990; see section 2.4.1) have assumed that pre-Islamic texts written in Arabic would follow the standardized orthographic practices of the Islamic period and CA, wherein nunation on singular nouns is not represented graphically, there is in fact no reason to assume that. The CA orthographic system is based on the application of Qurʾānic spelling norms, which appears to represent a variety without nunation, to varieties that had nunation. Further, nunation in the form of mimation (an m instead of n) is represented in, e.g., Ancient South Arabian languages
(Stein 2011: 1051), as well as Akkadian (Huehnergard and Woods 2004: 242). The CA practice of not representing tanwīn therefore represents an anomaly due to strict
21 adherence to conventions created originally to suit a different dialect (see chapter 3; Van
Putten and Stokes forthcoming).
The only possible exception to this development is an n suffixed to a few nouns in
Safaitic (see examples below). There are only a handful of examples, however, out of tens of thousands of published inscriptions (Al-Jallad 2015b: §4.5.1), and the morpheme may or may not be etymologically related. Thus virtually all attested dialects in the pre-
Islamic period attest the loss of tanwīn. This loss factors into discussions of the phonological development of final short vowels, including case vowels on singular nouns. I turn now to a discussion of the detectable manifestations of case in the corpora under investigation.
2.2 SAFAITIC As noted above (chapter 1), the inscriptions written in the Safaitic script, found mostly in the Ḥarrah of southern Syria and northeastern Jordan, have recently been shown to represent a continuum of pre-Islamic Arabic dialects. As mentioned above, the
Safaitic writing tradition did not represent vowels by means of matres lectionis. Thus the study of case marking in the dialects written in the Safaitic script must rely mostly on indirect data. However, a recently published inscription from NE Jordan in Greek transliteration, A1, provides invaluable direct evidence of Arabic in this same region.
In his grammar of the varieties attested by these inscriptions, Al-Jallad (2015:
§4.6.1b) argued based on patterns in the representation of final glides, for the presence of an accusative case, represented morphosyntactically by final /a/. Specifically, when participles from III-y/w roots function as nominal predicates, the attested forms lack the 22 final glide, e.g., dm (<*dmy) “writing,” s²t (< *s²tw) “spending the winter.” The lack of the glide here strongly suggests that these non-accusative forms were realized with a long vowel (e.g., /dāmī/ and /śātī/). These forms show the regular contraction of *iyu > ī, attested in CA as well, e.g., al-dānī < *al-dāniyu “the near, close (one).” However, when used adverbially, which in Semitic languages is typically expressed by the accusative, the final glide is written, e.g., dmy /dāmeya/7 “writing,” and s²tw/s²ty /śātewa/ and /śāteya/
“spending the winter.” This again patterns with CA, where the glide is written on indefinite accusatives, e.g., al-dāniya “the close, near (one) (accusative fsg.).” The distribution of spellings with and without glides corresponds exactly to non- accusative/accusative, paralleled by CA, and thus Al-Jallad’s interpretation is secure.
Confirmation of Al-Jallad’s interpretation is found in the inscription A1, where we find direct evidence of the case system in a text transliterated using the Greek alphabet (Al-Jallad and Al-Manaser 2015). Importantly, the inscription also revealed that the accusative, morphosyntactically represented by word-final a, functioned to mark the direct object of fientive verbs:
αουα ειραυ βακλα /wa yerʿaw baqla/ “And they pastured on fresh herbage”
Another function of the accusative attested in A1 is marking the direct object of verbs of motion:
αθαοευα βαναα αδαυρα /ʾatawa banāʔa ʾad-dawra/ “He came to Banāʾa in this region”
7 I follow Al-Jallad’s transliteration of etymological short *i as /e/ based on the fact that in the vast majority of cases when this is transliterated into Greek, epsilon and not iota is used (Al-Jallad 2017: §4.1.2). 23 In light of the rarity of prepositions following verbs of motion, it is likely that this function of the accusative is active in most of the dialects represented by the Safaitic script, e.g., ẖyt h-mdbr “He migrated into the inner desert” (WH 65, apud Al-Jallad
2015a: §4.6.1a).
Before I discuss manifestations of case marking by long vowels, one particularly common formula in the Safaitic tradition deserves comment in connection with case marking by means of short vowels. In many Safaitic inscriptions, the author of the inscription laments over the death of a person or persons who were “struck down by fate,” which is rġm mny. The latter is the name of a personified fate, which appears in
Nabataean as mnwt /manōt/ (Al-Jallad 2015a: 206). The first word appears in the singular, rġm, as well as, when referring to more than one person, the sound masculine plural rġmn. While Jamme (1967: 347) proposed interpreting rġm(n) as an active participle /rāġim(ūn)/, producing the epithet “abhorer of fate,” Al-Jallad has rightly argued that this makes little sense in the context of mourning in which this phrase typically occurs. Instead, he has suggested rather that rġm(n) is an adjective of the pattern faʿīl(ūn), which when derived from a fientive verb, is typically passive in meaning. His translation is thus “struck down by fate” (ibid.). In other words, the most natural interpretation of the phrase is as a patiens adjective faʿīl(ūna) + AGENT. Significant here is that, when plural, the noun, here rġmn, is not in construct, as illustrated by the retention of the final n of the sound masculine plural. That the distinction between construct and absolute was still active in the Safaitic dialects is shown in, e.g., RQ.A 10: b-mʾty frs¹
“with two hundred cavalry units,” where mʾty is the dual oblique construct form 24 /meʾatay/. The same syntactic structure is found outside of this one phrase, in e.g.,8 l s²gʾ
{b}{n} {ṣ}{h}{y} w-wgm ʿl ʾs²yʿ-h ḥrbn ʾl ḥwlt “For S²gʾ {son of}{Ṣhy} and he grieved for his companions who were plundered by the tribe of Ḥwlt.” In this (also common) construction, the author grieves over his companions who were plundered ḥrbn by the tribe of Ḥwlt.
Agentive passives are not attested in CA. Similar constructions, however, can be found in e.g., Qurʾān 72.8:
واﻧﺎ ﻟﻤﺴﻨﺎ اﻟﺴﻤﺎ ﻓﻮﺟﺪﻧﮭﺎ ﻣﻠﺌﺖ ﺣﺮﺳﺎ ﺷﺪﯾﺪا وﺷﮭﺒﺎ
/waʾinnā lamasnā l-samāʾ fa-wajadnā-hā muliʾat ḥarasan šadīdan wa-šuhuban/
In utterances such as these, speakers quite possibly reanalyzed the nouns and adjectives in the accusative case, originally a type of specifying accusative (Arabic tamyīz), as the agent of the passive verb, i.e., from “filled with” to “filled by.” This is a commonly attested type of reanalysis (cf. Coghill 2016), which is often responsible ultimately for a re-alignment of argument realizations, from accusative to, ultimately, ergative. Such a reanalysis could conceivably stand behind this construction as well.
If such a reanalysis stood behind constructions like those discussed above, then the agentive noun would have been marked accusative. As we have seen, nouns that would allow us to detect accusative marking exist but, so far, none have been attested in this construction. Nevertheless, the apparent use of a passive adjective followed by an agent noun is intriguing not only because it is not attested in CA, adding to the diversity
8 This inscription was discovered in Marabb aš-Šurafāʾ, NE Jordan, in May 2015 and will appear in the author’s forthcoming Leiden University dissertation. 25 of attested constructions in pre-Islamic Arabic, but also because it provides a potential precursor to similar structures in Middle Arabic texts, where it is much more widespread
(see below, chapter 4).
Indirect evidence for long vowel case inflection can be discerned based on spellings of the relative pronoun ḏ in a few inscriptions. The relative pronoun in Safaitic, spelled with just the consonant ḏ, is cognate with the CA determinative pronoun, which inflects for case, marked by a long vowel: ḏū/ḏā/ḏī (nom/gen/acc). The most commonly attested use of the relative-determinative pronoun in the Safaitic corpus is in the phrase
ḏʾl “of the lineage of…” (Al-Jallad 2015a: §4.10a). In his grammar, Al-Jallad (ibid.) reports that, in one unpublished inscription, the author wrote ḏyl instead of the typical ḏʾl, which could possibly suggest the loss of intervocalic glottal stop and a resultant homorganic glide reflecting the quality of the preceding vowel: *ḏī ʾāl > ḏīyāl. He further notes that the context of the inscription would necessitate the genitive in a Classical-like case system. A recently discovered inscription from Jabal Qurma in northeastern Jordan seems to attest a nominative realization: l gdy bn mnʿt ḏwl ʿmrt “By Gdy son of Mnʿt of
9 the tribe of ʿmrt (QUR 689.3.1). As with ḏyl, the most plausible explanation is that the inscription represents the loss of intervocalic glottal stop, and the homorganic glide w represents underlying /ḏūwāl/, the expected nominative. The evidence from these inscriptions tentatively suggests that, in at least some of the dialects represented by the
Safaitic script, long vowel case inflection, as well as final short /a/ accusative, were
9 This inscription will appear in the forthcoming Leiden University dissertation of Chiara Della Puppa. In terms of the reading of the inscription, Chiara has suggested caution, as the w glyph in this inscription has an unusual tail. One the other hand, the circle of the glyph has a clear line marked through it, typical of w but very unusual for a y. After viewing the photograph, my opinion is that the reading of a w is secure. 26 maintained, but short vowel nominative u and genitive i had been lost. It must be admitted, however, that because we do not have both attested in the same inscription, it is possible that these simply represent varieties in which the case of the relative- determinative pronoun has been frozen, but in different cases (cf. Namāra inscription nominative dw, but Yemeni ḏī, reflecting a frozen genitive).
Finally, as mentioned above, virtually all of the dialects represented by the
Safaitic inscriptions have lost nunation on singular nouns. Al-Jallad identified several instances of n on morphologically indefinite nouns, which he identifies as vestiges of nunation, e.g., wgm wln “he grieved in despair” (AAEK 394, apud Al-Jallad 2015a:
§4.5.1). Another examples is found in KRS 1551 h lh rwḥ w-mḥltn l-ḏ yʿwr h-s¹fr “O Lh, send the winds but may he who would efface this writing have a dearth of pasture”
(ibid.). Al-Jallad argues that while this n could represent an idiomatic usage of the dual, because of the lack of parallel for this idiomatic dual usage, it is better to interpret the n here as a relic of nunation. Ultimately, the few examples of suffixed n can be nothing more than suggestive. It is possible that some varieties had preserved nunation, but it is clear from the inscriptions that nunation is absent in the vast majority of the inscriptions.
If Al-Jallad’s interpretation is correct, this provides evidence of nunation suffixed to feminine singular nouns, as in CA but, as will be discussed below, unlike in a number of pre-Islamic (and some modern; see chapter 5) dialects.
We do not have evidence for the status of short high case vowels in non-final position, so it is possible that, like in other dialects attested in the southern Levant (see below 2.) they were retained non-finally, e.g., before pronominal suffixes. The very 27 limited data perhaps also suggest that case marked by long vowels still inflected as in proto-Arabic, or it could be that some dialects had generalized the nominative case in all contexts, while others the genitive.
Thus, the detectable evidence suggests the following:
Table 7: Evidence for Case in Safaitic
Nunation Short Vowel Case Long Vowel Case Marking Marking
Almost Complete Absence Active Accusative on Possible generalization of of nunation Definite and Indefinite one case? Nouns
2.3 ḤISMAIC The Ḥismaic script, formerly “Thamudic E,” is, like most other Ancient North
Arabian scripts, defective, meaning vowels are not represented with matres lectionis
(King 1990: 43). As such, we should not expect to find much evidence for the state of the case system in the dialects represented by the Ḥismaic script. However, two observations related to our discussion of the case system deserve mention. First, as with Safaitic,
Ḥismaic inscriptions attest the absence of nunation, e.g., ndm “good friend” (cf. CA nadīmun), etc (King 1990: 59).
Indirect evidence for case inflection is possibly attested in one Ḥismaic inscription (Macdonald forthcoming): l ʾbs¹lm bn qymy d ʾl gs²m w-dkrt-n lt w-dkrt lt ws²yʿ-n kll-hm
“By ʾbs¹lm son of Qymy of the lineage of Gs²m, and may Lt remember me (or us) and may Lt remember our companions, all of them” 28 This is a typical Ḥismaic inscription in most ways; however, the presence of w following the deity Lt is unusual. ws²yʿ is probably the plural of s²yʿ “companion,” which is usually written ʾs²yʿ. It is possible, as Ahmad Al-Jallad (p.c.) has suggested, that the dialect of the author had lost glottal stop in this context (cf. ḏyl instead of ḏ-ʾl in Safaitic). If so, then if the preceding word ended in a vowel, it would be natural for the quality of that vowel to result in a homorganic glide enabling smoother transition to the following word, which, in this case, also begins with a vowel. The presence of w here could suggest that Lt, the subject of the clause, was marked nominative by means of u, i.e., /Lātu/, and hence pronounced /lātu wašyāʿnā/.
Another bit of potential evidence for case marking in Ḥismaic, this time the accusative, involves the presence of the subjunctive a, attested in a long votive inscription near Mādaba in Jordan. The relevant portion reads: f ygzy nḏr-h, vocalized by the editors /fa yagzeya naḏara-hu/ (Graf and Zwettler 2004). The spelling of the final y in ygzy strongly suggests the presence of the final vowel, since Ḥismaic, like Safaitic, otherwise never uses matres lectionis to represent what would, without a final vowel, be a final long vowel: /yagzī/. It is not implausible, then, to deduce that, if final short a was regularly maintained, as it is here, then case inflection would also have been maintained
(suggested indirectly by the example above).
The few examples just discussed constitute fairly meager evidence at best, and thus cannot be relied upon too heavily. All that can be said is that it seems, based on these examples, that at least some dialects represented by the Ḥismaic script possessed a fully
29 functional case system. If so, then this constitutes one difference between Hismaic on the one hand, and Safaitic varieties and that of the urban Nabataean on the other.
Thus we can very tentatively suggest the following for the Ḥismaic evidence:
Table 8: Evidence for Case in Ḥismaic
Nunation Short Vowel Case Marking Long Vowel Case Marking
No Nunation Functional Nominative and No Evidence Accusative?
2.4 CLASSICAL NABATAEAN The Nabataean script typically refers to several related forms used in and around their territory of the Nabataean kingdom, which was centered in Petra and extended, at its height, from
Ḥegrā in NW Arabia to Boṣtrā in southern Syria in the north, and from Wādī Sirḥān in the east to the Negev and Mediterranean coast in the west (Macdonald 2003: 38). While both monumental and calligraphic forms of the script associated with this area were used by people who claimed
Nabataean identity, including the royal family, as M.C.A. Macdonald has pointed out, it is important not to assume a priori a link between the script and a person’s political or ethnic affiliations (ibid., 39). I use the term Nabataean here therefore to refer to a script and writing tradition, which does in any case show certain peculiarities and conventions (Diem 1976; 1979-
81). By ‘classical Nabataean,’ I refer to material plausibly connected with the period of the reign of the Nabataeans. This primarily includes the ʿĒn ʾAvdat inscription, as well as onomastic evidence.
2.4.1 ʿĒn ʿAvdat The ʿĒn ʿAvdat inscription consists of six lines of text written in the Nabataean
Aramaic script, with lines 1-3; 6 in Aramaic, and lines 4-5 in Arabic. Initially, the editors 30 of the editio princeps (Negev et al. 1986) dated the inscription somewhere between the late first and early second centuries CE (between 88-125 CE), which would make it the earliest Arabic inscription written in the Nabataean script so far known10. The inscription records the dedication of a person named Garmallahi son of Taymallahi to the deified
Nabataean king, ʿObodas. The two lines of Arabic rhyme, and quite possibly record an originally oral liturgy to the same king (Macdonald 2005: 98-9). The text followed here is
Macdonald’s (Fiema et al 2016: 400):
1) dkyr b-ṭb q{r}ʾ[ʾ] qdm ʿbdt ʾlhʾ w-dkyr 2) Mn ktb - - - - 3) Grmʾlhy br tymʾl{h}y šlm l-qbl ʿbdt ʾlhʾ 4) F-yfʿl lʾ fdʾ w-lʾ ʾṯrʾ f-kn hnʾ ybġ-nʾ ʾl-mwtw lʾ 5) ʾbġ-h f-kn hnʾ ʾrd grḥw lʾ yrd-nʾ 6) Grmʾlhy kt[b] b-yd-h
1) May he who [reads/recites] [this] be remembered for good before ʿbdt the god and may 2) He who wrote be remembered 3) May Grmʾlhy son of Tymʾlhy be secure in the presence of ʿbdt the god 4) And he acts neither for benefit nor favour and if death claims us 5) Let me not be claimed. And if an affliction occurs let it not afflict us 6) Garmallahi wrote [this] with his own hand
The discussion here will concentrate on the Arabic text in lines 4-5; on the spelling of the name of the author of the inscription, see section 2.7 below. Several features attested in this section deserve comment. The presence of w suffixed to several nouns (ʾl-mwtw “death,” and grḥw “wound”) has been variously interpreted. Negev et al.
(1986: 58) transliterate grḥw as /garḥu/, but do not otherwise comment on the origin or
10 The dating of this inscription is contested, however. For the various debates, see Fiema et al (2016: 400 ff.). 31 function of the final vowel. Subsequently, some scholars (cf. Bellamy 1990: 78) have assumed that it represents a Classical-like case system, which would mean that, as the w is the same on definite and indefinite nouns, both *u and *un were represented by w.
More recently, Michael Macdonald (Fiema et al 2016: 401-2) has questioned whether this feature marks case, noting that synchronically w is suffixed to most personal names in
Nabataean (on w suffixed to names, see section 2.6 ‘wawation’), as well as, in one inscription from North Arabia (cf. JSNab 17), common nouns, regardless of case. Blau
(1977: 183) has correctly noted, however, that since the context of most personal names suffixed with w is linguistically Aramaic, which lacked a case system, and not Arabic, we would not expect any other case marking than the citation form, i.e. the nominative.
Therefore the function of w suffixed to personal names and the w in this inscription, while almost certainly etymologically identical, are not comparable.
Others have also argued against the presence of nominative case marked by w based on different readings of the texts. Most notably, Ambrose (1994) followed by
Testen (1996), have suggested that the w following grḥ and ʾl-mwt were not markers of case at all, but rather the conjunction wa, which they read with the following nouns. This alternative reading is motivated by the semantic and syntactic difficulties inherent in interpreting the inscription. However, it is clear that the waws in question are connected to the previous words; that is, they are connected via ligatures to mwt and grḥ. Further, the proposed re-readings do not, in my opinion, produce more natural readings. Testen’s argument is marred in general by the assumption that the inscription should be interpreted
32 through the lens of Classical Arabic stylistics and lexicography.11 Despite continued debate over the meaning of the inscription, nevertheless the most natural interpretation of the two waws suffixed to mwt and grḥ, given the presence of the accusative marking (see immediately below), are that they mark the nominative case.
The interpretation of the two final alifs suffixed to the nouns fdʾ “benefit” and ʾṯrʾ
“favour,” requires some comment as well. The first noun, fdʾ is most likely to be interpreted, with Kropp (1994: 167) and Bellamy (1990: 74), as from the root *fdy. Given the spelling of this noun with alif, presumably vocalized /fedā/ or /fedē/, suggests that the final sequence *ayv had undergone the shift to a monophthong ā, attested in, e.g.,
Classical Arabic, or ē as in the language behind the QCT (Van Putten 2017). The current form, however, does not offer direct evidence for case, as it is equally as possible that
*ayv > ā/ē had already occurred prior to any loss of final short case vowels. The form of this noun therefore does not offer evidence one way or the other.
The second noun, ʾṯrʾ, is open to two possible interpretations, and the interpretation one adopts will directly bear on the issue of case in the inscription. Kropp
(1994: 167) proposes two possible readings, either ʾaṯar or ʾuṯrā, though he does not specify which he prefers, nor the differences in meaning. Most scholars (e.g., Bellamy
11 Indeed, Testen’s proposed re-reading is barely comprehensible (p. 292): “And may he act (and he acts) that I may (be made to prosper?) and not (be deprived?); At our proper time Death seeks us, but I do not seek Him; At our proper time I (repel?)/(let alone?) (My? Assailant?) but not (he repels?)/(he lets alone?) us.” Additionally, his reconstruction requires a number of ad hoc orthographic proposals. For example, he suggests that p kn hnʾ, traditionally interpreted as a conditional “if there is,” is rather a prepositional phrase “in our time.” To manage such a reading, he interprets p as the preposition fī (p. 288). This is highly unlikely, however, since Nabataean orthography typically represents all final vowels with a mater lectionis. This is confirmed by JSNab 17 (for which, see below, 2.4.3), where the preposition fī is spelled py as expected. 33 1990: 74; Fiema et al 2016: 400) have chosen the former, vocalized as /ʾaṯara/. In this interpretation, the only plausible interpretation of the final alif is as marking the accusative. The alternative, ʾuṯrā, is possibly derivable from *ʾuṯrayv, which means that, like fdʾ, it, too, would have undergone the *ayv > ā/ē shift. While the latter is technically possible, it is otherwise quite rarely attested. Further, the meaning given in those examples, “the choice for oneself of good things,” hardly makes sense in this context.
Therefore it seems preferable to follow the majority opinion of ʾaṯar and interpret the alif as marking the accusative /a/. Alternatively, we may follow Kropp (2017) and Al-Jallad
(forthcoming b) in interpreting it as ʾuṯr, “scar,” in which case the final alif is still best interpreted as marking the accusative. Thus attestations of nominative and accusative inflection in the inscription seem secure.12
While many aspects of the interpretation of this inscription remain unresolved, the function of the matres lectionis as markers of case is fairly clear, as we have seen.
Further, the most parsimonious explanation of their distribution is that short case vowels had been retained word-finally. Since the text almost certainly represents a religious liturgy - which may represent an archaic register - we cannot necessarily infer anything about the spoken dialects of the 2nd century Negev from this inscription alone:
12 When one takes the name of the author (garmallẖi son of taymallāhi) into account, we actually have all three cases attested! 34 Table 9: Evidence for Case in ʿĒn ʿAvdat
Nasalization Short Vowel Case Marking Long Vowel Case Marking
No nunation Nominative and Accusative No Evidence
2.5 LATE NABATAEAN By late Nabataean, I mean Arabic material written in the Nabataean script after the fall of the Nabataean kingdom at the hands of the Romans in 106CE. After the annexation of Nabataea,
Greek replaced Aramaic as the language of administration in the region (Macdonald 2003: 51).
The Nabataean script continued to be used in NW Arabia, as evidenced not only by the abundant graffiti (Nehmé 2013: 81 mentions at least 1801 so far, with several hundred others recently discovered). Inscriptions in the Nabataean script between the 3rd and 5th centuries CE are in fact almost solely found in NW Arabia. It has long been of interest that the only inscriptions in the 6th century CE in the Nabataean script are found in southern Syria.13 Laïla Nehmé (2013: 40-1) has suggested that scribal schools associated with various Arab kingdoms and tribes in NW Arabia existed. It was there, in NW Arabia, where the Nabataean script transitioned from its Classical
Nabataean form to Early Arabic. This section will deal with material from the 3rd through 5th centuries, and those 6th century inscriptions from southern Syria in a subsequent section.
2.5.1 JSNab 17 This inscription, a tomb inscription carved on a mountain called Qaṣr al-Bint, is one of the many tomb inscriptions discovered in the southernmost of Nabataean cities, Ḥegrā (modern
Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ in NW Saudi Arabia) (Healey 2009: 107). The inscription is unique for a number of reasons. First, it is dated to 267 CE and thus postdates the other tomb inscriptions by several
13 These inscriptions are considered the earliest examples of the Arabic script, which is simply the latest phase of Nabataean development. 35 centuries (Fiema et al 2016: 402). Second, an inscription in Thamudic D, an Ancient
North Arabian script, accompanies the Nabataean inscription (JSTham 1). Perhaps most interesting is that the inscription is written in a somewhat mixed language. That is, while most of the text is in Arabic, a number of what might be considered the most salient discourse features found in Nabataean Aramaic frame the Arabic text (ibid.). I will again rely on Macdonald’s edition of the inscription (Fiema et al: 402):
1) dnh qbr{w} ṣnʿ-h kʿbw br 2) ḥrtt l-rqwš brt 3) ʿbd-mnwtw ʾm-h w hy 4) hlkt fy ʾl-ḥgrw 5) š/snt mʾh w-š/styn 6) w-tryn b-yrḥ tmwz w-lʿn 7) mry ʿlmʾ mn yšnʾ ʾl-qbrw 8) d[ʾ] w-mn yftḥ-h ḥšy w 9) wld-h w-lʿn mn yqbr w{y}ʿly mn-h
1) This is the grave which Kʿbw son of 2) Ḥrtt made for Rqwš daughter of 3) ʿbd-mnwtw, his mother. And she 4) died in al-Ḥigrū 5) year one hundred and sixty 6) two in the month of Tammūz. And may 7) the Lord of the World curse anyone who desecrates this grave, 8) and may he curse anyone who opens it, apart from 9) his children, and may he curse anyone who buries [a body] or removes [a body] from it.
I will address the etymology and function of the w, which is suffixed in this inscription to all triptotic Arabic nouns, both morphologically definite and indefinite, in a separate section below (2.6). Significant for the present discussion is that it clearly does not
36 function in this inscription to mark the nominative, unlike its function in the ʿĒn ʿAvdat inscription, but like the Namāra inscription. This is confirmed by its occurrence on the noun ʾl-qbrw “the grave,” in line 7, which functions as the direct object of the verb yšnʾ
“to desecrate.” The absence of final short vowels on verbs is strongly suggested by verbal forms, like lʿn /laʿan/, as we would expect it to have been written *lʿnʾ had its pronunciation been /laʿana/. Most nominal forms are either suffixed with w, or occur in construct where, given that the vowel is not technically word-final, we would not expect to find the use of matres lectionis. Concerning the lack of w suffixed on names ending in
*t, as well as feminine names, see section 2.6 below. The two occurrences of external masculine plural inflection are non-initial members of construct clauses and thus, as expected, in the oblique case. Whether the oblique case had already been generalized to all syntactic positions, or whether plural case inflection was still operative, is therefore impossible to determine:
Table 10: Evidence for Case in JSNab 17
Nasalization Short Vowel Case Marking Long Vowel Case Marking
No nunation Nominative Generalized; No Direct Evidence No Functional Case
2.5.2 Namāra The Namāra inscription is an epitaph of mrʾlqys, which Macdonald (Fiema et al
2016: 405-6) correctly vocalizes as /marʾ al-qays/ instead of the Classicized /imruʾu l- qays/, a ruler over a territory of debated scope and identity (Kropp 1991; Zwettler 2006).
The inscription, discovered in 1901 and dated securely to 328CE, was carved on the lintel 37 of the ruler’s mausoleum, which is found approximately one kilometer east of the Roman outpost at Namāra (Macdonald 2008: 469). The text is written in a dialect of Arabic in the Nabataean script. In the following discussion, I follow Macdonald’s edition (Fiema et al 2016: 405):
1) ty nfs mrʾlqys br ʿmrw mlk ʾl-ʿrb kl-h ḏw ʾsr ʾl-tg 2) w-mlk ʾl-ʾsryn w-Nzrw w-mlwk-hm w-ḥrb Mḏḥgw ʿkdy wgʾ 3) b-tg-h fy rtg Ngrn mdynt Šmr w mlk Mʿdw w-nḥl bny-h 4) ʾl-šʿwb w-wklw l-frs w l-rwm f-lm yblġ mlk mblġ-h 5) ʿkdy hlk snt 227 ywm 3 b-kslwl blsʿdzwwldh
1) This is the funerary monument of Mrʾ-l-qys son of ʿmrw king of all ʿArab who bound on the crown, 2) and ruled the two Syrias and Nizārū and their kings, and fought with Maḏḥiǧū until he struck 3) with his spear on the gates of Naǧrān, the city of Šammar. And he ruled Maʿaddū and gave his sons [rule over] 4) the (settled) peoples, and they were made proxies for Persia and Rome. And no king could match his achievements. 5) Thereafter, he died in the year 223 on the 3rd day of Kislūl…[?]
There are several features attested in the inscription that bear on a discussion of case. Perhaps most striking is the absence of final matres lectionis representing case vowels. Thus it seems as if the variety behind the Namāra inscription did not possess short case vowels (cf. already Diem 1973: 236). Also absent is any representation of final nunation on indefinite singular nouns, which would be expected on, e.g., mlk in line four.
At the same time, a suffixed w, often labeled wawation, is attested on a number of proper names in the inscriptions. On this phenomenon, see section 2.7 below.
38 Several features etymologically connected with case vowels are attested, however. In the first line of the inscription, the relative pronoun dw (presumably /dū/) is in apposition to the head noun mrʾlqys, which follows nfs and would thus be in the genitive case were case operational. The relative dw then represents a frozen nominative case that has been generalized to all syntactic positions (on the fixed nature of the vowel, see Kropp 1993: 73; Zwettler 2006: 89). Finally, the sound plural bnyh in line three is in the oblique case. As the object of the preceding verb nḥl, it is possible that this word represents a partial case system. Given the frozen case attested on the relative, however, and the absence of case vowel representation on singular nouns, it is perhaps more probable that bny represents a case of the oblique generalized to all masculine sound plurals, regardless of syntax. This latter generalization is ubiquitous in the modern Arabic dialects.14
Table 11: Evidence for Case in Namāra Inscription
Nasalization Short Vowel Case Marking Long Vowel Case Marking
No nunation No Direct Evidence - Nominative generalized on triptotes - Oblique generalized on diptotes?
14 This same generalization took place in, e.g., Hebrew and Aramaic, and is probably connected to the breakdown of the case system and the generalization of the oblique case, probably due to its higher frequency. It is thus impossible to determine the relationship of this variety to the modern dialects, in which the same generalization has taken place. 39 2.6 WAWATION The term wawation has been used to refer to both an orthographic and morphological phenomenon. Orthographically, it refers to the suffix w on nouns, especially personal names, in inscriptions written in the Nabataean and Palmyrene
Aramaic scripts (Macdonald et al 2016: 28 ff.). The present discussion will focus on the
Nabataean data, as well as material written in Greek that is the topic of a recent study
(Al-Jallad 2017). I will consider the modern dialectal data below in chapter 6.
This w suffix has traditionally been interpreted as a (usually lengthened, see below) remnant of the nominative case *u (Nöldeke 1885; Rabin 1951: 56-7; Diem
1973). Cantineau (1978: 168ff.) argued instead that the suffixed w was associated with an emphatic state of non-Aramaic names. Given the distribution of the feature, as noted by
Blau (2006a), and the lack of plausible etymon and path of development for an emphatic w, I follow the majority in interpreting the feature as derived etymologically from the nominative. The presence of a morpheme /u/ or /ū/ (length is uncertain; see Behnstedt
2016: 64) suffixed to morphologically indefinite nouns in the Tihāma region of Saudi
Arabia and northern Yemen with the same distribution (absent on feminine nouns ending in *at, as well as diptotes), provides a clear modern parallel (Blau 2006).15 It is also
15 There may in fact be a historical relationship between (some of) the Nabataean dialects and the modern Tihāma dialects. The parallel is otherwise unattested, which makes it an attractive suggestion. On the other hand, given the relatively common changes necessary to account for this distribution, independent development cannot be ruled out either. Nevertheless, the fact that the feminine ending *-at is diptotic in both the Nabataean and modern Tihāma varieties is potentially stronger evidence of a relationship. Ultimately, the position one takes on whether that distribution is an innovation, thus suggesting a relationship, or a retention, which would provide no evidence of relationship, will determine one’s position in this debate. 40 important to note that the synchronic function of the morpheme is not necessarily significant when determining the etymology.
In most Nabataean inscriptions, wawation is suffixed to proper names: tymw
“Taym,” šlmw “Sālim,” ʿbdw “ʿAbd,” etc. In JSNab 17 (discussed above in section
2.4.3), however, it occurs in a variety of contexts. Wawation is suffixed to morphologically indefinite nouns, e.g., qbrw “grave,” kʿbw “personal name Kʿbw,” ʿbd- mnwtw “personal name ʿAbd-Manōto’,” as well as morphologically definite nouns, e.g.,
ʾl-ḥgrw “city name ʾal-Ḥegro,” ʾl-qbrw “the grave.”
In short, w is suffixed to all triptotic Arabic nouns16, regardless of case. As Rabin (1951:
57) and Blau (2006a: 28-9) have suggested, the distribution of w in JSNab 17 is similar to that of word-final /u/ in modern Yemeni Tihāma dialects. There is one important difference, however: the w occurs here on both morphologically indefinite and definite nouns, whereas /u/ occurs in Yemeni dialects only on morphologically indefinite nouns.
In some, mainly late texts, wawation is written following the (usually genitive)
ʿbdʾlbʿlyw, as well as, in one 5th עבדאלבעליו ,.case vowel of a compound name, e.g
”bṭbw “for good בטבו ,century CE inscription from Sakākā, on a noun with a preposition
(Nehmé 2010: 71). Such examples have led a number of scholars to suggest that, at least by the last centuries before Islam, the w here was purely an orthographic device without corresponding phonetic reality in the dialect(s) of the region (cf. Rabin 1951: 56-7; Diem
16 That is, with the possible exception of mnwtw. Two explanations for the presence of w on mnwtw are forthcoming. First, it is clear here that the name had undergone the shift from *awa > ō, and thus was probably realized /manōt/ (Al-Jallad forthcoming e). Unlike the rest of names ending in etymological *at, the name could then have been reanalyzed as a triptotic ending, and thus suffixed by w. Another possibility is that, in whatever variety the name was first created, the feminine ending *at was triptotic, as it is in Classical Arabic. 41 1981: 350). While that is of course possible, and perhaps even probable in some instances, such as the name ʿbdʾlbʿlyw, the phonetic reality of wawation in at least many occasions is confirmed by evidence from Arabic names transliterated in the Greek script:
Pre-Islamic - Αουαθω /ġawwāṯo/; Σιθρο /sitro/; Αττρο /ʾaṭro/ (Al-Jallad 2017: §5.1117)
Islamic - Αµβρου /ʿamru/ (Al-Jallad forthcoming c: §4.7)
Whether the w in these later inscriptions represents purely an orthographic archaism (so Diem 1981: §133-139), or still represents an underlying phonetic reality is debatable. I would suggest that both are possible to a certain degree. As the transliterations into Greek script as well as the retention of w in early Arabic inscriptions demonstrate, w continued to be realized phonetically in at least the cases of various proper names. The parallel morpheme attested in modern Yemeni dialects offers the possibility that such a generalized morpheme, present in this case on all nouns (whether morphologically definite or indefinite) is plausible. The writing of w on names that were also spelled with a mater lectionis representing an original case vowel (e.g., ʿbdʾlbʿlyw) could suggest that, in those cases, the w was purely orthographic. This is made clear in cases such as the one from Sakākā, mentioned above, where Aramaic bṭb “for good,” is
bṭbw. On the other hand, it is possible that the final w was בטבו ,.written with
17 Regarding length and Greek transliteration, Al-Jallad notes (ibid.) that the spellings attested could point to either a short or a long vowel, since *u is virtually always represented by omicron in the Graeco-Arabica from the Levant and Arabia. 42 role, though at present we are unable to determine the exact distribution with any precision.
2.7 ONOMASTIC EVIDENCE The Arabic onomastica attested in the Nabataean inscriptions contains important evidence for the presence and function of case in the pre-Islamic Arabic dialects of the southern Levant. As we will see, there is a sizeable body of personal names in the
Nabataean corpora that are linguistically Arabic, and end in either w or y.18 Werner Diem
(1973) studied the examples known at the time and argued that the w ending spelled long
/ū/, etymologically the nominative, and that y spelled long ī, etymologically the genitive.
ʿabd ʾ al-baʿlī/, the final ī is almost/ עבדאלבעלי Thus, for example, in a name such as certainly etymologically the genitive case. He documents bi-forms of the same names
ʿbdʾlh), or on) עבדאלה / (ʿbdʾlhy) עבדאלהי ,.spelled with and without the same final y, e.g
(grmʾlhy) גרמאלבעלי / גרמאלבעליו (which a final y is followed by a final w, e.g., (grmʾlhyw
(for more on this final w, sometimes called wawation, see 2.6 above). Based on these forms, as well as other Arabic names written without final matres lectionis, he argues that by 100 CE, case had fallen out of use in the spoken Nabataean-Arabic dialect, and remained as a purely orthographic archaism (ibid., 235-6).
18 It is important to bear in mind the notorious difficulties in adducing information on a given dialect, or the contemporary linguistic reality behind the dialect of the bearer of a name. Proper names have a tendency to be archaic, retaining features that were altered or lost in contemporary speech. Further, names often become popular and spread beyond the lect in which they were originally coined, and thus may represent a completely different linguistic reality than that present in the lect of its bearer (Huehnergard 1987: 714-16). Thus for our purposes, only names that can be safely considered Arabic linguistically will be considered. Additionally, the present discussion assumes only that the names reflect linguistic reality in the lect in which they were coined. 43 Subsequent discoveries of linguistically Arabic names in Nabataean inscriptions have not drastically changed the picture described by Diem, but they have nuanced it, especially the important discovery of the ʿĒn ʿAvdat inscription. First, a word on terminology is important. Discussions of Nabataean ethnicity (most recently see Al-
Otaibi 2015), have led to unsound generalizations about those who lived under Nabataean rule, and those who wrote using the language and script that we call ‘Nabataean.’
Importantly for our discussion, Macdonald (Macdonald 1999: 255) notes that:
“it is only modern scholars who have applied the term ‘Nabataean’ to
various forms of the late Aramaic script and, by extension, to the
dialect(s) they usually express...it is clearly anachronistic and highly
misleading to use a text in what we call (italics original) the ‘Nabataean’
dialect and script as a guide to the ethnicity of the person who wrote or
commissioned it.”
The importance of his argument against assuming a uniformity of ethnicity based on script use is equally applicable to linguistic analysis. Diem often writes of “Nabataean
Arabic,” as if all speakers who wrote some Arabic name or word in a Nabataean inscription would have spoken the same dialect of Arabic simply because they used the same script, or gave their children similar names, etc. Regarding the last point, Laïla
Nehmé (2013: 68-9) has recently compiled a list of names in a transitional form of the
Nabataean script found in NW Arabia (Darb al-Bakrah), and compared them to similar names found in other scripts. There is indeed a great deal of overlap, reminding us that the same names were commonly found across political and social boundaries. 44 The publication of inscriptions from the Sinai and southern Palestine, as well as
NW Arabia, show a high percentage of names consistently written with matres lectionis to mark etymological case vowels. Indeed, a large number of the names in Nabataean script attesting final genitive are found in these regions (Negev 1991: 46-719; Nehmè
2013: 5220), which could suggest a dialectal distribution to some of the onomastic features. It might be that the dialects on the southern and SW periphery of the Nabataean realm retained final short vowels longer than those in the southern Levant.21
Alternatively, however, it is possible that archaizing forms of these names were popular in these regions, without implying anything about case retention in those dialects (see again, note 16 above).
As with the evidence of the Nabataean orthographic variation, the spellings of
Arabic names in the Greek script vary considerably. In most cases, the first elements of compound names end in omicron, which are almost certainly to be interpreted as reflexes of the nominative (Al-Jallad 2017: §5.3):
Αβδοραββελος /ʿabdo-rabb-ʾel/ Boṣrā (S. Syria), unknown date
Αβδοοβδας /ʿabdo-ʿobdah/ Boṣrā, unknown date
Αβδοµανχος /ʿabdo-mank/ Negev (S. Palestine), 241 CE
indicating /ʿabd(u) l(l)āhi/, 38 were found in the עבדאלהי Of the 48 occurrences of the name ʿabdallah 19 Sinai and the Negev. 20 Most of the theophoric names, such as compounds with ʾlh /ilāh/, are written plene with a final y in NW Arabia. 21 If indeed the speakers of dialects attested in the Ḥismaic inscriptions represent rural/semi-nomadic dialects close to, but distinct from, the more urban dialects of the Nabataean region, then the more archaic nature of Ḥismaic in comparison with Nabataean could be interpreted as part of a dialectal continuum in which Petra and northern dialects of the Nabataean realm were more innovative, whereas rural and nomadic dialects to the south were more conservative. 45 Θαιµοµαλεχος /taymo-mālek/ Lejā (S. Syria), unknown date
Θεµοοβδου /teymo-ʿobd[ah]/ Nessana (S. Palestine), 562 CE
Αβδοαρθα /ʿabdo-ḥārṯah/ Ghōr aṣ-Ṣāfī, 361 CE
Αβδοοµανου /ʿabdo-ʿomān/ Ḏībān (Jordan), 183 CE
Αβδοµανου /ʿabd-ʿoman/ Ḥismā desert (S. Jordan), unknown date
Given that these names are typically Hellenized by the addition of Greek case endings at the end of the names, the presence or absence of a final short /i/ corresponding to the genitive is impossible to determine. Al-Jallad (ibid.) suggests that the /o/ (which is how *u is written in Greek script virtually everywhere; see ibid., §4.1.3) was protected from apocope by virtue of its non-final position. In addition to personal names, a number of toponyms in the Levant began to be written with omicron beginning around the 2nd century CE (see Elitzur 2004: 100), a fact which occasionally drew remark: βηρσαβεε η
νιιν βηροσσαβα, “Bersabee which is now Berossaba” (IGLS XXI/2 153-102, apud Al-
Jallad 2017: §5.3).
A minority of personal names does not show evidence of this o:
Ουµαβιη /ʾumm-ʾabī/ Ghōr aṣ-Ṣāfī, 384 CE
Ουµαυατ /ʾumm-ġawwāṯ/ Ḥawrān (S. Syria), unknown date
Interestingly, compound names in which the second noun begins with the definite article
/ʾal/ almost never show this o:
Αβδαλγου /ʿabd-alg[ā]/ S. Ḥawrān
Αυσαλλας /ʾaws-allāh/ S. Ḥawrān
Αβδαλλας /ʿabd-allāh/ S. Ḥawrān 46 Αυθαλλου /ġawṯ-allāh/ Umm al-Jimāl (Jordan)
Αλαφαλλου /ẖalaf-all[āh]/ Lejā
Σαδαλλου /saʿd-all[āh]/ Nessana
Al-Jallad (ibid., 44) suggests that this be due to the fact that the article was always analyzable, and thus subject to renewal. In that case, an archaic pronunciation with o
/ʿabdo ʾal-baʿli/, if in a dialect that had otherwise lost case inflection, would tend toward updating the pronunciation precisely because of the article. Given that the alif is consistently written, it seems unlikely that it had elided as in Classical Arabic (hamzat al- waṣl), and therefore such an interpretation has less explanatory power. More convincing in my opinion is Al-Jallad’s note (ibid., 45) that perhaps a phonological change resulted in oʾa > a, similar to the one that produced Classical Arabic form IV: *yuʾafʿil > yūfʿil > yufʿil. In this case, however, the vowel of the article was generalized, probably because the article was still an active part of the spoken language. One exception to this trend,
αβδολµιθαβος /ʿabdo l-mīṯab/, attested at Ghōr aṣ-Ṣāfī, seems to attest the presence of a short /o/ (< *u). Another attestation of the same name, αβδαλµιθαβου /ʿabd al-mīṯab/, follows the general trend of /a/ vowels (ibid.).
In addition to etymological short case vowels, several compound names attested in Greek and Nabataean scripts attest reflexes of the relative pronoun, again with a frozen nominative form /ḏū/ in contexts where we would expect the genitive (Al-Jallad 2017:
§5.4):
Αβδουσαρης /ʿabd-ḏu-śarey/ Boṣtrā, unknown date
Θειµαδουσαρους /teyma-ḏū-śar[ey]/ Ḥawrān, unknown date 47 Θεµοδοθσαρης /teymo-ḏū-śarey/ Umm al-Jimāl, unknown date
In the names with *taym, “slave,” the o (< *u) is occassionally present, whereas with
*ʿabd it is not, which Al-Jallad (ibid., n.142) interprets to mean that the names with taym are older, when case was still active. In either case, the relative is frozen as a nominative, which potentially provides further evidence of the breakdown of case across the southern
Levant in the early centuries CE. Again, however, these data should be appropriated only cautiously. For many of the Greek attestations, the names are reconstructed and may not reflect the proposed Semitic correlates. Further, the special challenges that proper names pose for linguistic analysis mean that the proposed interpretation of the attested forms discussed above can bear on our discussion only indirectly.
2.8 - 6TH CENTURY ARABIC Three inscriptions from southern Syria, those of Zabad, Jabal Says and Ḥarrān, comprise most of the 6th century Arabic data. They are written in the stage of development at which the Nabataean script came to resemble the script used to write the
Qurʾān, which subsequently became used to write CA, thus they are often said to be written in the Arabic script (Fiema et al 2016: 410ff.). Of the three inscriptions, only one,
Jabal Says, bears directly on a discussion of case marking in the period under discussion in this chapter. This is due to the fact that no final vowels are represented, and we have no way of knowing whether the authors of these inscriptions adhered to a set of conventions by which they did not represent final vowels, or if spelling was phonetic and no vowels were realized in the respective varieties of Arabic. Due to the dearth of other evidence, such questions cannot be answered, and I will refrain from speculating. 48 2.8.1 Jabal Says The location is the inner cone of a volcano approximately 100km southeast of
Damascus. The inscription under investigation, dating to around 528CE, is again a short graffito consisting of four lines (Fiema et al. 2016: 412):
1) ʾnh rqym br mʿrf ʾl-ʾwsy 2) ʾrslny ʾl-ḥrṯ ʾl-mlk ʿly 3) ʾsys ms¹lḥh snt 4) 4x100+20+1+1+1
1) I Ruqaym son of Maʿarrif the Awsite 2) Al-Ḥāriṯ the king sent me to 3) Usays, as a frontier guard, [in] the year 4) 423 [= AD 528/9]
The relevance of this inscription for our discussion centers around the final h of the noun ms¹lḥh, which Macdonald has translated “frontier guard” (see also Larcher
2010: 107). Larcher (ibid.) provides a thorough discussion of the possibilities, which are either that the h here is conventionalized, as with the tāʾ marbūṭa in Qurʾānic and CA spelling or not. That is, did scribes in this tradition write h no matter whether the ending was realized as /h/ or /t/, or did they represent the phonetic realization? As Larcher points out, the word s¹nt “year of,” is written with a t, suggesting a phonetic spelling, against a convention. If the translations of mslḥh as “frontier guard” are correct, indicating that it is syntactically accusative in this context, then in case-bearing varieties of Arabic we would expect an accusative, marked by a short a, and thus the spelling t indicating /ata/. That it is written with h and not t, could only have happened if the final short vowel was not
49 present. Thus the most likely explanation, given the apparent loss of nunation, is that final short case vowels are also not present in this variety.
As we saw above, however, in most Nabataean names, feminine *at was diptotic, that is, lacked nunation. An initial round of final short vowel loss is attested in the
Nabataean material, leading to triptotes marked with final short vowels, but diptotes without. If the same was true in this region, then the spelling h would not not necessarily mean that the variety was caseless, but rather just that it, like much of the rest of the
Nabataean Arabic material, had lost final short vowels before the loss of nunation, leading to zero-marked diptotes. Given the brevity of the inscription and the lack of other data, this can only be speculation.
2.8.2 Petra Papyri Investigation of the evidence for Arabic in the pre-Islamic period has revealed not only evidence in other Semitic scripts, but also a growing number transliterated into the
Greek script. This is not altogether surprising, given that the Greek language functioned as a language of prestige across a rather large swath of the western half of the late antique
Near East. Most of the Arabic evidence is in the form of onomastics, toponyms and oikonyms (discussed in section 2.6 below), many of which are undated. Additional material in the form of microtoponyms and oikonyms attested at Petra, most of which dates to the 6th century CE, is the subject of a study by Ahmad Al-Jallad et al (2013). In what follows, I will provide a brief overview of the evidence for case in the these papyri.
In section 2.9, I will integrate it into a discussion of the evidence for case attested throughout the Levant, NW Arabia and Sinai in the pre-Islamic period. 50 As was noted in the discussion of the onomastica in section 2.5, Al-Jallad identifies a number of o-compounds, that is names which consist of two or more nouns whose first member is suffixed with an omicron, which he rightly connects with the nominative case vowel *u (Al-Jallad 2017: §5.3). In the same study (§5.3.2), he lists series of construct phrases that lack this omicron, which he interprets as signifying the loss of case in non-phrase final contexts as well. These examples are taken from the Petra
Papyri (southern Jordan, dating to the 6th century CE), with the exception of one example from Nessana (southern Palestine, 6th century CE):
Μαλ ελ-Κουεσιρ /māl el-qoweysir/ “Property of the Qaysarites”
Αιν Μοελα /ʿayn moweylah/ “Spring of Moweylah”
Αραµ αλ-Ασαφιρ /ārām al-ʿaṣāfir/ “the land markers of the Usfurites”
Μαθ Οσαινα /māt ḥosaynah/ “the land of Hosaynah”
Μαθ Λελα /māt leylā/ “the land of Leyla”
αλ-Βερα Μαλ Χαφφα[9]αρ /al-berāḥ māl kaffa--ar/ “the tract of land belonging to/of
Kaffa…”
Χαφφατ αλ-Αουαουερ /kaffat al-ḥawāwer/ “the grain depository of the
Hawarites”
Ειαλωδεειδ /ʿeyāl ʿōdeyyid/ “the sons of ʿOdeyyid”
The interpretation of the last example, taken from Nessana, is slightly ambiguous.
Al-Jallad reconstructs an underlying /ʿeyāl/ for the first term but, given that the second term in the compound starts with o, it is possible that it represents underlying /ʿeyālo
ʿodeyyid/. The other examples, however, clearly contrast with the widespread o- 51 compounds and, with Al-Jallad, certainly suggest that, at least in these dialects, short vowel case marking was no longer productive. Whether the loss of this feature was widespread and included the rest of former Nabataean territory to the north and south of
Petra, or was more localized to the southern Levant, is of course impossible to determine given the distribution of the data.
One other feature attested in the Graeco-Arabica that bears on a discussion of final short vowels in general is that of the pronominal suffixes, specifically the masculine singular suffix *hu. Two personal names, common across a number of script traditions, are composed of a preposition + noun + 3ms suffix and are each found in transliteration in Greek script: Χααµµος /ka-ʿamm-oh/ “like his grandfather;” {Β}ακκος /be-ḥaqq-oh/
“in his right” (Al-Jallad 2017: §5.3). The second of these names is less certain, as Al-
Jallad notes, but the first is secure, being well-attested in a number of scripts, cf. Safaitic kʿmh (cf. WH 1834 et passim). If the underlying phonetic reality were **kaʿammoho, we would expect two omicrons **Χααµµοος indicating the presence of a laryngeal (as with, e.g., a pharyngeal /ʿ/: Αβδοοβδας /ʿabdo-ʿobdah/). The spelling therefore strongly suggests that the realization of 3ms suffixes on nouns ending in consonants was /o(h)/.
Some Safaitic inscriptions attest a parallel development, which we can detect thanks to word boundary spellings with 3ms suffix -h and the following article are written once
(Al-Jallad 2015a: 96).
The vowel of the suffix has generally been reconstructed anceps; that is, it is reconstructed as of indetermined length, often realized as long and short in related langages, or related dialects of a language (cf. Blau 1982; Huehnergard 2004: 150). That 52 the form reflected in the Graeco-Arabica, and indeed the modern dialects reflects short *u is suggested by its realization as /o/ in this material. As Al-Jallad (2017: §4.1.3; 4.2.3) highlights, etymological *u was usually realized as a more central /o/, whereas etymological *ū was realized higher and more fronted.
2.9 COMPARATIVE DISCUSSION As we have seen, despite the limitations imposed by the nature of the evidence, and the scripts in which they were written, we can nevertheless discern bits of the reality of case in various dialect groupings from the Levant, NW Arabia and Sinai from the period before the 7th century CE. The following chart offers a comparison of the evidence from the discussions above.
Table 12: Comparative Evidence for Case in Pre-7th Century Arabic
Nom Sing Gen Sing Acc Sing Nom Pl Obl Pl
Safaitic N N Y - -
Ḥismaic Y - ? - -
Early Y Y Y - Y Nabataean - Onomastica & ʿĒn ʿAvdat
JSNab 17 N N N - Y
Graeco- Y Y - - - Arabica
Jabal Says - - N - - *The abbreviations Y(es) and N(o) indicate definitive evidence for the feature; a question mark (?) indicates indeterminative evidence for a feature; a dash (-) indicates the lack of any evidence.
53 The Ḥismaic evidence, though extremely meager, suggests rather conservative dialects. Based on the presence of final short /a/ on the prefix conjugation, as well as the indication of final short /u/ marking the nominative, it appears that final short vowels were retained, and case marking on singular nouns was functional in at least some of the dialects of the corpus. The only change from the PA system discussed in chapter 1 necessary to posit for the Ḥismaic evidence, then, is the loss of nunation. Safaitic likewise attests varieties with a functional accusative on both definite and indefinite nouns, as well as functional subjunctive marked by final short /a/. Unlike Ḥismaic, however, both direct and indirect data suggests the absence of nominative /u/ and genitive
/i/. The simplest explanation to account for the developments in Safaitic is the following ordered rules22:
1) Loss of nunation: *n > Ø / _#
2) Loss of final short high vowels: *u, *i > Ø/_#
The evidence found in the Nabataean corpora has been the topic of much discussion in the context of historical Arabic linguistics, and the data are open to several possible interpretations. Based on a detailed examination of the Nabataean onomasticon,
Diem reconstructs the following for “Nabataean Arabic” (1981: 343):
Proto-Arabic Nabatean Arabic Classical Arabic
Context *un/in/an *un/in/an un/in/an Pause *un/in/an *ū/ī/ā -/-/ā
22 It is of course possible that several rounds of final vowel loss actually occurred, as is true in, e.g., the dialects represented by the Nabataean script. However, given our complete inability to determine waves of changes based on the nature of the data, I have chosen to propose the simplest path from the reconstructed PA system and the distribution of the data. 54 Essentially, Diem reconstructs a pausal situation in Nabataean Arabic wherein, unlike
Classical Arabic prose pause, all three etymologically short case vowels were lengthened.
But Diem’s proposal, while possible, is not required by the evidence. First, as Diem himself notes (ibid., 231), in Nabataean orthographic practice, all final vowels, whether etymologically short or long, are represented as long by means of a mater lectionis. Thus the representation of final case vowels on names in the Nabataean script is not in itself evidence for their length. Further, most attested personal names in Nabataean are made up of a second element that is definite, e.g., ʿabd ʾal-baʿl, which should have been lost in such proposals. Diem suggests (1981:344) that this is due to analogy with those nouns that are indefinite, and thus underwent *in > ī. Only two names contain indefinite nouns
ʿabdu qawmi/), and so it/ עבדקומי ʿabdu ʾ aysi/ and/ עבדאיסי) as their second elements hardly seems likely that so few examples would have exerted such influence over the writing of the vast majority of morphologically definite nouns. Regarding the second of these names, ʿabdu qawmi, Ahmad Al-Jallad (p.c.) has suggested to me that it is perhaps better interpreted as “servant of my nation,” rather than “servant of a nation,” since the absence of the definite article in such a name is peculiar. If true, that leaves but one name in which the second component is indefinite.
Diem’s pausal forms with long vowels suppose a Classical-like paradigm. In CA, pause occurs at the end of a clause, or, in poetry, at the end of each hemistich (Fischer
2002: §52-57). Final vowels in CA poetic pause are lengthened, e.g., non-pausal al-baytu
~ pausal al-baytū. Indefinite nouns, normally ending in a case vowel followed by tanwīn, in poetic pause undergo the dropping of tanwīn and the lengthening of the now-final 55 vowel: non-pausal baytun ~ pausal baytū. Diem imagines the same pausal phenomena behind these dialects. The dialects spoken in this region are clearly not Classical Arabic, however, and there is no a priori reason to assume that case developed in the same way in these dialects as it did in the varieties behind CA. A particularly strong argument against the lengthening of final case vowels after the loss of nunation is the lack of evidence for the subsequent loss of final long vowels in the region. As Diem’s study of the onomastica illustrates, final y representing the genitive case is eventually lost.
However, this would be hard to reconcile with his phonological arguments. If indeed all case vowels had been lengthened, another more plausible suggestion for its loss is morphological loss. That is, a breakdown in the case system itself led to the loss of this feature, and not a (purely) phonological loss. Another serious problem with Diem’s reconstruction is the lack of any positive evidence for the retention of nunation in any context.
Blau (2006a) also proposes a historical scenario to explain the distribution of wawation on personal names. He argues for the following developments (ibid., 28):
1) Loss of final short vowels 2) Loss of tanwīn 3) Case had been lost, so final ū was generalized
Blau’s account, like Diem’s, is intended to explain the distribution of wawation on personal names, and the above rules can adequately explain the diptotic evidence, but it does not explain other names, such as ʿabdu l-baʿli, which is spelled with a final y, but should have been lost in Blau’s step 1.
56 Further, neither Blau nor Diem deals with the ʿĒn ʿAvdat (or the other inscriptions), which was discovered after Diem’s study, and which Blau does not address.
As noted above, the variety behind the inscription exhibits the loss of nunation. The presence of etymologically short final case vowels on definite and indefinite singular nouns (ʾl-mwtw, grḥw, ʾṯrʾ) suggests a few possibilities. It is possible that the vowels were subsequently lengthened, possibly after a stage in which they were nasalized, resulting in their retention: *u,*i,*a > ũ, ĩ, ã > ū, ī, ā. This is how Diem (1973) interprets any examples of case written in the Nabataean script. However, the presence of final vowels on definite nouns, which were etymologically short and were not followed by nunation, suggests rather that in the variety behind ʿĒn ʿAvdat, nunation had been lost but final short vowels were retained. And while it is possible that case vowels on indefinite nouns were realized long, while those on definite nouns were short, this is a needless complication that is only necessary if one assumes that short vowels must have otherwise been lost. There is no a priori reason to assume this, however. It is more economical to interpret the evidence as indicating that case vowels remained short and simply had not been lost in this dialect.
Admittedly, such an interpretation would seem to be complicated somewhat by the spelling of the two verbs yfʿl in line 4, and ʾrd in line 5. The status of these two forms is not clear, however. While scholars have typically translated f-yfʿl as an indicative,
“And he acts” (cf. Bellamy 1990: 74; Fiema et al 2016: 400), it is not clear whether this is the case or whether it represents a conditional clause (i.e., “let him act”; cf. Kropp 1994:
170, though Kropp translates the verb as “to make”), or even a perfective “he has acted.” 57 As for the verb ʾrd, also read ʾdd “to fester (of a wound)” (cf. Bellamy 1990: 74), it has generally been interpreted as a suffix conjugation 3ms “He/it wanted.” While this is of course a possible reading, it is also possible to interpret the form as a maṣdar. Given the limited context, and the limitations of the script, an explanation is not immediately forthcoming. It is clear, however, that Blau’s proposed scenario does not hold for this inscription, in addition to the varieties in which the compound names (reviewed above) were coined.
The inscription JSNab 17 (267CE) from NW Arabia (Ḥegrā) attests a different, so far unique, distribution of final w. Every triptotic noun, whether definite or indefinite, is suffixed with w. That diptotes are once again distinguished argues against the idea that the author of this text was confused and simply put a final w after every word. That diptotes are ineligible for wawation can be interpreted, with Blau, as indicating that final short vowels had been lost before tanwīn, resulting in its loss on diptotes, verbs, and, originally, definite nouns. Further, since wawation has ceased to function as a marker of the nominative case (occurring, for example, on the proper noun ʾl-ḥgrw “Ḥegrā,” despite the fact that syntactically it would require the genitive), case has clearly broken down as a result of a systemic breakdown. Thus the distribution of wawation n JSNab 17 seems to bear out Blau’s reconstruction. Unlike Blau, however, I do not assume a CA-like change
*un > ū, as such a lengthening is unnecessary and is apparently based on the assumption that loss of tanwīn would necessarily follow a CA pausal paradigm.
Another scenario is, however, possible to explain the development of the vowels in these inscriptions. So far, discussions have assumed that the article and tanwīn were 58 incompatible, as in Classical Arabic: baytun “a house” / al-baytu “the house” but **al- baytun. But since the article cannot be reconstructed safely to PA (Al-Jallad forthcoming a), and nunation in Semitic originally had to do only with marking the unbound state
(Huehnergard 2004), and was therefore not a marker of indefiniteness, there is theoretically no reason why they could not have. Al-Jallad (forthcoming b) has suggested the following developments:
1) Loss of final short vowels. This resulted in the loss of vowels marking diptotes, and the modal system. 2) Final nunation lost. This resulted in forms like mawtu, mawti, mawta “(nom/gen/acc) death.” 3) Introduction of the definite article. It was then added to forms without nunation, but which still possessed final short case vowels on triptotic nouns. This is a very compelling argument, and perfectly accounts for the distribution of the case vowels in the inscriptions discussed above. Alternatively, we might imagine rather that, originally, the definite article co-occurred with nunation, since, as mentioned above, there was no reason they could not have. Nunation originally marked the unbound case, not indefiniteness. Once Al-Jallad’s first two steps occurred as he proposed, it would result in the same distribution. Given the lack of historical data, this proposal can only remain a hypothetical one. Either proposal seems equally possible at our present state of knowledge.
An important point to be made after discussing these two inscriptions is that, if
Blau’s proposal does indeed lie behind the distribution in JSNab 17, one can then not draw a direct line from ʿĒn ʿAvdat to JSNab 17. For Blau’s proposal to account for the distribution in JSNab 17, we would need to posit the extension of the nominative u from
59 indefinite to all forms, definite and indefinite. In ʿĒn ʿAvdat, as we saw, nunation was lost but there was no indication that an initial round of final short vowel loss had occurred, since both definite and indefinite nouns show case inflection. Thus any subsequent loss of final short vowels would have eliminated all case vowels, on both definite and indefinite nouns. If, however, my alternative proposal is correct (or Al-
Jallad’s), then the two inscriptions can be explained using the same initial set of developments, and JSNab 17 simply represents the breakdown of case and the extension of the nominative as a generalized nominal marker.
The Namāra inscription attests a variety in which it seems that final short vowels had been lost, in which the nominative has been generalized on the relative pronoun, and in which the oblique had been generalized to all contexts on sound masculine plural nouns. If the practice attested in the Classical Nabataean material of writing all final vowels continued into the later period, then the loss of final short vowels is confirmed.
However, given that this inscription was produced in southern Syria, two centuries after the fall of the Nabataean empire to the Romans, it is possible that a different scribal tradition was behind the conventions employed to write this inscription. We can therefore only safely conclude that the nominative form of the relative dw was generalized, and perhaps the oblique on sound masculine plurals. The former generalization could be seen as a part of the process of leveling the nominative on triptotes, seen in JSNab 17. If the variety behind the Namāra inscription did indeed level the nominative on triptotes, then it could represent a development from a situation like that attested in JSNab 17, after which final vowels were lost. Conversely, it could be that the variety behind the Namāra 60 inscription originated in a variety like that of ʿĒn ʿAvdat, after which lost final short vowels after the loss of tanwīn. The preservation of wawation on names would then either be an archaic element maintained only on (certain) names, or potentially simply the way people wrote those particular names. If the latter, then the phonetic reality originally behind wawation was lost.
In reconstructing the phonology of the vowel underlying w, scholars who have argued in favor of an original case vowel have almost universally reconstructed a long vowel, either /ū/ or /ō/. Nöldeke (1885) assumes that in Nabataean Arabic, *un > ū, represented orthographically by w, but *u > Ø, which was unrepresented. Rabin (1951:
56) further connects the use of w on Arabic names in the Nabataean corpora with the
Arab grammarians’ report that the tribe of ʾAzd pronounced pausal nominative *un as /ū/.
Diem (1981: 343) reconstructs a pausal form /ū/ (nominative) and /ī/ (genitive) for
Nabataean Arabic based on the assumption that the orthography represents long vowels.
This is possible, but he does not consider alternatives. But as Diem (1973: 236) elsewhere recognizes, w could have been used in Nabataean orthographic practices to represent either etymologically short or long /u/, as was seen in the ʿĒn ʿAvdat inscription (see section 2.4.1), as well as the Nabataean onomastica. The orthography thus does not provide conclusive evidence of the length of the vowel represented by w. In fact, the scholarly trend of interpreting the underlying length as long is apparently due primarily to the assumption that Classical Arabic pausal rules, namely *un/*in > ū/ī, would necessarily have been operative anywhere nunation was lost. Based on the discussions of the Arabic material in the Nabataean inscriptions above, and given the absence of any 61 indication of CA-like pausal lengthening, it is best to interpret wawation as representing underlying /u/ or /o/. The Graeco-Arabica spellings with omicron put the nail in the coffin of this debate, as ū would never have been written with omicron.
Personal names can certainly be useful, when supplemented by other data, for diachronic reconstruction; they are problematic at best, however, for identifying aspects of the synchronic grammar of their bearers. Indeed, names are often reused over generations, and can retain archaic features that have long since fallen out of use in the spoken dialect(s) of their bearers (cf. Macdonald 1998: 181ff.) and spellings of names may become fixed and may not represent contemporary pronunciation (see, e.g., Blau
1977: 9-10). They are useful, however, insofar as they tell us something about the varieties in which they were coined. And though many names were indeed common across the attested area, the orthography of the different scripts used in the Levant, NW
Arabia and Sinai do not seem to have influenced each other. Further, some names were created to honor historical figures and can thus be relatively dated. Through basileophoric names, for example, we can establish a terminus post quem for the loss of a feature. For example, Al-Jallad (2017 §5.3) suggests that the name Αβδοαρθας /ʿabdo-ḥarṯah/ could have been coined as early as the reign of the first king of the Nabataeans, Aretas I (169-
121 BCE), which would suggest that, at least in the dialect in which the name was first coined, the nominative in non-final position would have still been active in the 2nd century BCE. If, as he suggests (ibid.), the name Αβδοραββηλος /ʿabdo-rabb-ʾel/ refers to the final ruler of Nabataea, Rabbel II Soter, this extends the terminus post quem for the loss of this feature into the 2nd century CE. 62 The evidence from the Graeco-Arabica provides some evidence for the retention of case vowels in non-final position, where they would not be detectable in the Semitic scripts used in the region. Even there, however, we see a steady decline in their presence until, by the 6th century in the Petra Papyri, they are completely absent. The same absence probably obtained in the variety behind the inscription at Jabal Says (so Larcher
2010). As mentioned above, however, the only direct evidence is the use of h to spell feminine *at, suggesting that the word-final shift *at > ah, which stands behind most modern dialects of Arabic, had occurred in the variety. This would necessitate that no final accusative a was realized. If in the dialect behind the Jabal Says inscription, as in much of the Nabataean evidence (as well as the Qurʾān and modern Tihāma dialects; see chapters 3 and 5) the feminine ending was diptotic, and thus lacking tanwīn originally, then the h spelling in Jabal Says might represent another variety that had lost final short vowels before the loss of tanwīn. In that case, case might have still inflected on triptotes in that variety. Without more evidence for the script conventions used to write the inscription, however, it is impossible to say with any certainty.
2.10 CONCLUSION This chapter has reviewed the evidence for morphosyntactic case marking detectable in the pre-Islamic epigraphic material found in the Levant and NW Arabia.
Despite the challenges, which admittedly make the nature of the picture that emerges from this data incomplete, we nevertheless can discern a generally clear picture of some of the developments attested in these corpora. A number of dialect areas are broadly identifiable, including the Safaitic evidence, which attests a straightforward development 63 from the case system discussed above in chapter 1 via the loss of final short high vowels.
The Ḥismaic evidence is very slight, but probably attests a very conservative variety in which no final vowel loss appears to have occurred. The Nabataean evidence is more complex. We saw that in early Nabataean (ʿĒn ʿAvdat), the case system from chapter 1 is attested. Subsequently, a number of developments took place, including apparently levelling the nominative u (< *un) to all contexts (JSNab 17). Ultimately, evidence from the Graeco-Arabica, and probably from the inscription from Jabal Says in southern Syria, suggests that by the 6th century CE, case had broken down in most of these varieties.
Though the evidence reviewed above has not been systematically treated before, it has factored in some discussions of the development of case. In addition to Diem (1973 et al, discussed above), Blau (1977) acknowledged the breakdown of case based on the
Nabataean evidence available at the time. For him, however, these dialects were
‘peripheral,’ and did not reflect what he considered the vast majority of dialects in the
Arabian Peninsula. As we do not have any real evidence from Central Arabia in the pre-
Islamic period, such an assumption is unfalsifiable with regard to dialects presumably spoken in that region. However, we do have a witness to the linguistic reality in western
Arabia (the Ḥijāz) in the 7th century CE in the form of the consonantal text of the Qurʾān.
I turn now to a discussion of the Qurʾān as a witness to pre-Islamic Arabic.
64 CHAPTER 3: CASE IN THE QURʾĀNIC CONSONANTAL TEXT (QCT)
3.1 INTRODUCTION - WHAT IS THE QCT? I include in the corpora of pre-Islamic Arabic the language variety behind the
Qurānic Consonantal Text (henceforth QCT), which was set down in writing quite early after its initial production (see Déroche 2014 for a discussion of a number manuscripts that date to the 7th and 8th centuries). In this chapter, I use the term QCT to refer to the features represented, or suggested, by the orthography of the base text (Arabic rasm), which does not include any of the subsequent diacritical marks that were applied to this base consonantal framework in subsequent centuries (see Abbott 1939: 38-41 for a solid overview of the development of these diacritical marks). This distinction suggests the possibility of difference between the variety behind the QCT and the subsequent reading traditions, a topic around which there has been a good deal of debate and to which we now turn.
3.2 DEBATES OVER LANGUAGE OF THE QURʾĀN Scholars have debated the nature of the language in which the QCT was written for over a century. These questions originated in the observation that the orthography of the QCT does not represent a number of features that are characteristic of all of the traditions by which the Qurʾān is recited. This mismatch between orthography and language led to two scholarly camps, one that holds to the traditional view that the language of the Qurʾān is faithfully reflected in the reading traditions, and another that holds that the language behind the QCT is faithfully reflected by the orthography.
65 3.2.1 Language23 Variety Behind the Qurʾānic Rasm In the early 20th century, the German scholar Karl Vollers (1906, 1927) remarked on the mismatch between the orthography of the QCT and the features of the reading traditions and argued that the language behind the QCT was in fact a local dialect which had lost the glottal stop, as well as case inflection. He further argued that later on the
QCT was subsequently edited to reflect the register of the ʿarabiyyah. Vollers’ proposal about a caseless Arabic standing behind the QCT served as the basis for the work of
Kahle (1948) and Jonathan Owens (2006). Kahle (1948) argued with Vollers the the dialect of the QCT was that of Mecca, but differed from him in that Kahle did not believe that the QCT had been re-written. Rather, for Kahle, the reading traditions (qirāʾāt) reflected influence of the poetic language. Owens relies on the presence of a reading tradition, that of the Basran Abū ʿAmr ibn ʿAlāʾ, whose reading is characterized by word- final sandhi (Arabic al-idġām al-kabīr), to argue that originally the Qurʾān had been read without case vowels present: Q26:26 et passim qāla rabbuka > qarrabbuka “Your Lord said.”
The majority of scholars, such as Theodor Nöldeke (1910), Henri Fleisch (1974) and Chaim Rabin (1955) have held that the Qurʾān was originally recited with case.
Nöldeke (1910:2) argued against a caseless original behind the QCT on the assumption that, if case was not present in the original recitation of the Qurʾān, this caseless tradition would not have disappeared without a trace. Likewise, Blau (1977: 14-16) argued for the
23 Beyond the scope of this dissertation is a discussion of the proposals of Luxenberg (2007), who argued that the language of the Qurʾān was not Arabic, but an Aramaic-Arabic “mixed language.” His proposals have been critiqued in detail by, among others, Stewart (2008). Suffice it to say that, as far as the case system is concerned, the evidence of the QCT, discussed below, is perfectly consistent with an Arabic variety. We thus need not appeal to Aramaic varieties for the QCT evidence. 66 presence of case in the Qurʾān by contrasting pseudo-corrections supposedly attested in later, “Middle Arabic” texts, with their absence in the Qurʾān. Fleisch (1974: 97-101) and
Rabin (1955) both held that the language of the Qurʾān was in a pre-Islamic poetic koiné, a variety which served as a poetic register shared across Arabic-speaking tribes, and which served as the background of Classical Arabic. The few differences between
Classical Arabic and the language of the Qurʾān were explained as a few examples of local Ḥijāzi dialects.
If indeed the language behind the QCT inflected for case, the question that follows is why this system is only partially reflected in the orthography. To answer this question, scholars have appealed to the concept of ‘pausal spelling.’ Werner Diem (1976;
1979; 1981) offered the most exhaustive and rigorous attempt at articulating the principles and development behind such an orthographic practice. He argues that the tradition of writing Arabic behind the Ḥijāzi script, which developed from Nabataean
Aramaic, occurred as isolated bits of Arabic in an otherwise Aramaic context. Given their isolation, otherwise written in Aramaic texts, which do not inflect for case, Diem suggests that Arabic words would naturally be written pausally, without any overt inflection marked. As the Nabataean script came to be used to write Arabic increasingly, this principle continued and became the basis for the orthography behind the QCT.
Despite the sophistication of this approach, however, it fails to account for the data, both
Nabataean and, as we will see below, Qurʾānic.
As discussed in chapter 2, a number of proper names are attested in Nabataean
:/representing final /i/ and /ī י inscriptions with a final 67 גרמאלבעלי garm(o) ʾal-baʕli
אושאלבעלי ʾaws(o) ʾal-baʕli
These are especially common in the Sinai and NW Arabia (see chapter 2 above). Diem recognizes (1981: §130-131) that the representation of final case vowels in the orthography is in keeping with the practice of Nabataean orthography to represent final vowels, regardless of etymological length.
Also represented in Nabataean is the so-called wawation, which Diem (1973: §III) interprets as representing /ū/ (< nominative *un). At some point, at least in Nabataean
,became a hypocorism ,ו orthography, this feature, represented by the mater lectionis occurring on proper names in standard Nabataean:
/(ʿabd malik(ū/ עבדמלכו
Nevertheless, the very fact that this feature, which must have originated in an Arabic dialect spoken in the region, is represented is also an argument against the principle of pausal spelling.
Evidence from other contexts in the QCT also suggests that Qurʾānic orthography is not based on the principle of pausal spelling. Final long vowels on, e.g., III-w verbs in
:
”yamḥū llāhu/ “God wipes out/ ﯾﻤﺤﻮا ﷲ Q13:39
A minority of these verbs, however, are written short when followed by nouns prefixed by the definite article (which would create a superheavy syllable CVVC(C)):
68 ”yadʕu l-ʾinsānu/ “Man supplicates/ ﯾﺪع اﻻﻧﺴﺎن Q17:11
yamḥu llāhu/ “God wipes out”24/ ﯾﻤﺢ ﷲ Q42:24
Diem (1979: §33-36) fully describes this phenomenon, which also occurs on III-y forms, but does not connect this to the idea of pausal spelling. If pausal spelling was indeed the principle by which the QCT orthography operated, we would expect to always find these forms with w and y. That this is not the case also contributes to the evidence for an orthography that represented phonetic reality rather than one which generalized one form of the word to all contexts. As van Putten and Stokes argue in a forthcoming article, other features of the orthography of the QCT as well, such as representation of optional long ī shortening, show the variation we would expect if the orthography represents a system and tradition of sensitively representing the language of a text.25 I suggest that the concept is necessary only if one assumes a priori a that the language variety behind the
QCT had final short vowels. As we will see, this assumption is contradicted by the details of QCT orthography.
3.2.2 Approach of This Study In the analysis that follows, I will first detail the evidence for nominal case inflection in the QCT as reflected in the orthography, without appeal to subsequent reading traditions. I will follow this analysis with a section considering any evidence from this analysis, or other relevant data, which might suggest that the orthography of the
24 I thank Marijn van Putten for these references and the importance of this point. 25 It must be qualified by the adjective ‘relatively’ because of the opacity of the script in a number of aspects, e.g., not representing short vowels in most contexts. Still, those features that could be distinguished given the nature of the orthography, by and large are. 69 Qurʾān was intended to represent anything other than the earliest linguistic reality behind the QCT. A final section will offer conclusions and position the evidence within the context of the other pre-Islamic data examined in chapter 2.
3.3 LOSS OF NUNATION Nasalization26, called nunation in Arabic, refers to a morpheme [n] that originally distinguished unbound forms, wherein nunation was suffixed following a case vowel, from bound forms (i.e., those in construct) where the morpheme was missing. In Arabic, nunation has been interpreted as marking a morphologically (but not necessarily semantically) indefinite noun. In the QCT, nasalization on singular nouns is, with one exception, not orthographically represented.27 This has typically been explained by appealing to the concept of pausal spelling (cf. Diem 1981; Blau 1977). As was shown above, however, this principle does not explain Nabataean orthographic practice, nor does it fit the QCT data. In other script traditions (e.g., Akkadian, Ancient South Arabian, etc.) nasalization is represented normally in the script. Thus there are no a priori reasons why it should not be represented were it present in the variety behind the QCT.
Another feature of the QCT that suggests the loss of nasalization following final short vowels is the jussive forms of the verb kāna “he was.” In Arabic, the jussive verbal
26 I use the word nasalization in this dissertation to refer to the same thing as that to which nunation and tanwīn refers, namely the morpheme [n] marking the unbound state. I do not use it to refer to the process of nasalization of vowels or consonants, which is the more common general linguistic use of this term. 27 Etymologically, the /n/ of the dual (/ān/-/ayn/) and sound masculine plural (/ūn/ - /īn/) morphemes is also nasalization. It was not lost following these long vowels in any variety of Arabic, which I believe is likely because of the stressed nature of the final long vowels. This in turn led to its analysis as a part of the plural morpheme, which occurred much more rarely on singular nouns (see chapter 5 below). 70 form was characterized by the lack of a final vowel on the verb root, which, in hollow verbs led to the shortening of the medial vowel28:
(indicative) *yaẖāfu > *yaẖāf > (jussive) yaẖaf “He feared”
(indicative) *yakūnu > *yakūn > (jussive) yakun “He was”
The jussive form of kān ended in /un/, which was identical to the indefinite unbound form of the nominative singular, e.g., bayt-un “a house.” We would thus expect the nasal /n/ to be lost if indeed final nasalization following short vowels was lost, and this is what we find:
(ʾak(u)/ (Q19:20/ اك .1csg (yak(u)/ (Q8:53; Q9:74; Q16:120, Q19:67; Q40̈:28, 85; Q75:37/ ﯾﻚ .3msg (tak(u)/ (Q4:40; Q11:17, 109; Q16:127; Q19:9; Q31:16; Q40:50/ ﺗﻚ ..3fsg (nak(u)/ (Q74:43, 44/ ﻧﻚ .1cpl The forms that preserve the final /n/ (which occurs 58 times, and thus is in the majority) can probably be considered analogical restorations. It is also possible that this alternation was utilized for a stylistic or artistic reason that is not immediately apparent. The important point for our purpose is that forms without final /n/ can only be accounted for by appealing to the same loss of final nasalization after short vowels that is witnessed in nominal morphology.
One final feature of the QCT orthography that strengthens the argument for loss of final nasalization is the representation of short ‘energic’ forms, e.g., yaktuban “He will
as in regular Classical ن rather than ,ا certainly write.” This ending *-an is spelled with
28 CA, reflecting common Semitic syllabic restrictions, does not allow syllables of the type CVVC. In this case, the vowel is shortened to fit into an acceptable syllable structure, i.e., CVC. 71 Arabic orthography. This suggests it underwent the same *an > ā̆ change as the indefinite accusative:
’la-nasfaʕā̆ / ‘We will surely drag/ ﻟﻨﺴﻔﻌﺎ Q96:15
’la-yakūnā̆ / ‘he will surely be/ ﻟﯿﻜﻮﻧﺎ Q12:32
in the ادا Likewise, the adverb ʾiḏan ‘therefore; then, in that case’ is consistently spelled
which is most ,ا QCT. Thus all examples of *an in the QCT are represented by parsimoniously explained by positing a regular sound law *an > ā̆ .
The one example of etymological nasalization is in the fossilized compound phrase kaʾayyin “how many a.” The representation of nasalization here is in keeping with my belief that, where the morpheme was realized in the variety behind the text, it was represented orthographically. The reason for its retention here is not entirely certain. It might be that, like the interrogative man “who,” and preposition min “from,” it was always immediately followed by another noun and, thus, never truly phrase-final phonetically. Here again, the orthography of the QCT seems to represent the variety behind it quite accurately.
3.4 CASE IN THE QCT While case has often been reduced primarily to the short vowels (exemplified in
Owens forthcoming), active case inflection is well attested in the dual and plural, as well as a limited number of singular forms where case is represented in certain contexts by a long vowel. With regard to short case vowels, we will argue based on the orthography of
72 certain nominal forms that short vowels were lost word-finally, but maintained when non-word final.
3.4.1 Dual and Plural Nouns Inflection of the dual and sound masculine plural is diptotic, inflecting for nominative and oblique (genitive/accusative). The dual paradigm in Classical Arabic is -
āni (nom.)/-ayni (obl.). In the Qurʾān, the dual inflects as well, but as mentioned above, if indeed word-final short vowels were lost in the language of the QCT (on the indefinite accusative singular, see below), this yields:
Nominative Oblique
(al-wālidayn/ (Q4:135/ اﻟﻮﻟﺪﯾﻦ (al-wālidān/ (Q4:7/ اﻟﻮﻟﺪان .masc
(marratayn/ (Q9:126/ ﻣﺮﺗﯿﻦ (marratān/ (Q2:229/ ﻣﺮﺗﺎن .fem
As with the dual, the sound masculine plural paradigm in the Qurʾān aligns with that of
Classical Arabic, declining for nominative and oblique, except again that final short /a/ was apparently lost in the language of the QCT:
Nominative Oblique
(al-mūminīn/ (Q26:114/ اﻟﻤﻮﻣﻨﯿﻦ (al-mūminūn/ (Q23:1/ اﻟﻤﻮﻣﻨﻮن .masc
3.4.2 The Five Nouns There are five nouns (al-ʾasmāˍ al-ẖamsa) in Arabic whose forms in the construct differ from those in the absolute in a unique way29. These nouns are ʾaḫ ‘brother’, ʾab
‘father’, ḥam ‘father-in-law’, ḏū ‘possessor of’, and fū ‘mouth’. When in the absolute
29 On the Proto-Semitic origin of these construct forms, see Wilson-Wright (forthcoming). 73 (i.e., unbound) state, their orthography is unremarkable. When in construct, however, the case vowel is long and is thus represented by the corresponding mater lectionis (cf.
Fischer 2002: §150). Two of these, ḏū and fū, occur in the Qurʾān only in construct; the other three regularly occur in both absolute and construct states. Four of these nouns (ʾab,
ʾaḫ, ḏū, and fū) are attested in the Qurʾān in construct. In each instance, case inflection is exactly as we see in CA:
ʾab (ʾabū-k/ (Q19:2/ اﺑﻮك Nominative ʾabū-ka (ʾabā/ (Q33:40/ اﺑﺎ Accusative ʾabā (ʾabī-kum/ (Q22:78/ اﺑﯿﻜﻢ Genitive ʾabī-kum
ʾaḫ
(ʾaxū-h/ (Q12:8/ اﺧﻮه Nominative ʾaxū-hu (ʾaxā-hum/ (Q7:85/ اﺧﺎھﻢ Accusative ʾaxā-hum (ʾaxī-h/ (Q80:34/ اﺧﯿﮫ Genitive ʾaxī-hi
ḏū
(ḏū/ (Q65:7/ ذو Nominative ḏū (ḏa/ (Q5:106/ ذا Accusative ḏā (ḏī/ (Q14:37/ ذى Genitive ḏī
fū
(fā-h/ (Q13:14/ ﻓﺎه Accusative fā-hu
The examples reviewed above suffice to confirm that full case inflection represented by long vowels was retained and functional, as in Classical Arabic, and with precisely the same distribution that can be safely reconstructed for proto-Semitic
(Huehnergard 2004: 149; Al-Jallad and Van Putten forthcoming). We now turn to a
74 discussion of the evidence concerning case inflection that in Classical Arabic is represented by final short vowels.
3.4.3 Indefinite Accusative In the orthography of the QCT, the indefinite accusative, which is -an in Classical
Arabic (-ā in pause), is the only case from an etymological short vowel that is represented
,As suggested above, tanwīn appears to have been lost .ا orthographically, marked by except in the case of the frozen kaʾayyin. Thus unlike CA, the indefinite accusative case is manifested as /ā̆ / (on the length of this vowel, see section 6).
The syntactic distribution of the indefinite accusative is by and large consistent with that found in CA. As in CA, the accusative marks the direct object of transitive verbs, is used form adverbs, and, in one case, as a locative (Fischer 1982: §372):
Direct Object
”Then they would have found in it much contradiction“ ﻟﻮﺟﺪوا ﻓﯿﮫ اﺧﺘﻠﻔﺎ ﻛﺜﯿﺮا Q4:82 .1 I have made for you against them a clear“ ﺟﻌﻠﻨﺎ ﻟﻜﻢ ﻋﻠﯿﮭﻢ ﺳﻠﻄﻨﺎ ﻣﺒﯿﻨﺎ Q4:91 .2 authorization”
Adverb of Specification
”Indeed, I have sent it down as an Arabic Qur’an“ اﻧﺎ اﻧﺰﻟﻨﮫ ﻗﺮﻧﺎ ﻋﺮﺑﯿﺎ Q12:2 .3 ”And twelve springs gushed forth from it“ واﻧﻔﺠﺮت ﻣﻨﮫ اﺛﻨﺘﺎ ﻋﺸﺮة ﻋﯿﻨﺎ Q2:60 .4
Circumstantial Adverb
”And he smiled, amused at her speech“ ﻓﺘﺒﺴﻢ ﺿﺎﺣﻜﺎ ﻣﻦ ﻗﻮﻟﮭﺎ Q27:19 .5
75 Locative/Directive
”Go into [any] settlement“ اھﺒﻄﻮا ﻣﺼﺮا Q2:61 .6
3.4.3.1 Q33 and Final Alif Spellings .occur on indefinite triptotic nouns ا The vast majority of accusative spellings with
However, a few exceptions occur that merit discussion. In Sūrah al-Aḥzāb (Q33), the primary end rhyme is Rī/ūRā̆ . The final /a/ in each rhyme is the indefinite accusative; in
despite the fact that the noun is ا three verses, however, the final /a/ is written with morphologically definite:
”You assumed about Allah [various] assumptions“ ﺗﻈﻨﻮن ﺑﺎ اﻟﻈﻨﻮﻧﺎ Q33:10
I wish we] had obeyed God and we had obeyed the]“ اطﻌﻨﺎﷲ واطﻌﻨﺎ اﻟﺮﺳﻮﻻ Q33:66 messenger”
”And they led us stray from the right path“ ﻓﺎﺿﻠﻮﻧﺎ اﻟﺴﺒﯿﻼ Q33:67
occurs in the accusative in rhyming اﻟﺴﺒﯿﻞ Oddly, in one instance, Q33:4, the word position, and, given the rhyme, should probably be read as /as-sabīla/, but is written
:ا without
”And he guides to the right way“ وھﻮ ﯾﮭﺪى اﻟﺴﺒﯿﻞ Q33:4
It is undoubtedly significant that, out of 800 instances in which the end rhyme is ā
(most of which are ī/ūRā̆ ), the only time the definite accusative is rhymed all occur in this one surah (Larcher 2014: 4-5; Van Putten and Stokes forthcoming). It is difficult to know how to interpret these exceptions. It is possible that the accusative ending was realized in order to fit the rhyme scheme, which is otherwise indefinite accusative. Alternatively, it
76 is possible that these verses represent some type of interpolation originating in a different tradition altogether.
One might be tempted to interpret this as an example of Classical/Pre-Islamic poetic pause. Federico Corriente (1971: 23) sensibly suggested that dialects possessing and lacking iʿrāb almost certainly overlapped chronologically, and were mutually intelligible. We might interpret the forms in Q33 as examples of “poetic pause,” such as what we find in Pre-Islamic/Classical Arabic poetry. In that case, this sūrah perhaps reflects an iʿrāb (poetic?)-variety, as Corriente’s proposal suggests. In line with this interpretation, we would expect a “pausal spelling” for pausal forms in the nominative and genitive, in which *un > ū and *in > ī would be spelled with waw and yāʾ. Since the only case attested in rhyme position in Q33 is accusative, we cannot determine whether or not this is correct.
A third possibility is that this sūrah represents a slightly different scribal tradition.
The implication of this possibility would be that in fact word-final short a was present but unrepresented in the main scribal tradition in which the QCT was written, per the traditional approach. One other bit of evidence for the traditional approach which must be included for the sake of completeness is the occurrence of forms which in CA would
,.So in, e.g .ا have ended in short a in rhyming position with forms ending in final alif
Q84: 13-15:
[innah(u) kān fī ʾahluh masrūrā̆ / “Indeed, he had [once/ اﻧﮫ ﻛﺎن ﻓﻲ اھﻠﮫ ﻣﺴﺮورا 84.13 be among his people in happiness
77 innah(u) ẓann ann(a) lan yaḥūr(a)/ “Indeed, he had thought/ 84.14 اﻧﮫ ظﻦ ان ﻟﻦ ﯾﺤﻮر he would never return [to God]
,balē inn(a) rabbah kān bih baṣīrā̆ / “But yes! Indeed/ 84.15 ﺑﻠﻰ ان رﺑﮫ ﻛﺎن ﺑﮫ ﺑﺼﯿﺮا his Lord was ever of him, seeing
It is tempting at first glance to conclude from the few examples such as these that the traditional interpretation is correct, and that final short a was present but simply unwritten. In a few instances, however, rhymes in the Qurʾān appear to be based on final long vowel/consonant combinations in which the accusative singular essentially invisible
(e.g., Q53.28). Interestingly, most of the instances of this involve the noun sabīl “way, path,” when morphologically definite (see e.g., Q4.43-5; 25.17; 74.15). It is not clear what to make of these examples.
Additionally, there are several instances in which diptotic nouns are unusually
,When indefinite, diptotic nouns in Classical Arabic inflect for nominative .ا spelled with marked -u, and oblique, marked -a (Fischer 1982: §152), but do not take tanwīn. As we
only marked accusative when < *an, and thus normally does not mark ا ,have seen diptotic nouns. The following instances are exceptions:
And there will be circulated“ وﯾﻄﺎف ﻋﻠﯿﮭﻢ ﺑﺎﻧﯿﮫ ﻣﻦ ﻓﻀﮫ وأﻛﻮاب ﻛﺎﻧﺖ ﻗﻮارﯾﺮا (Q76:15 (=76:16 among them vessels of silver and cups clear as glass”
Indeed, we have prepared for the unbelievers“ إﻧﺎ اﻋﺘﺪﻧﺎ اﻟﻜﻔﺮﯾﻦ ﺳﻠﺴﻼ وأﻏﻠﻼ وﺳﻌﯿﺮا Q76:4 chains and shackles and fire”
78 Both of these examples can probably be explained by appeal to poetic license. The first occurs in end-rhyme position in another sūra with īRa/ūRa rhyme. The second, while not in end-rhyme position, clearly forms an internal rhyme based on final /a/:
/ʾinnā ʾaʿtadnā l-kāfirīn salāsila wa-ʾaġlāla wa-saʿīra/
3.4.4 Orthography of Final āʾ Sequences The fact that the orthography of the Qurʾān consistently represents the indefinite
but does not represent any other case suggests that ,ا accusative with a mater lectionis a/i/u and in/un have been lost word-finally. Whether short case vowels were lost in non- final position is less certain. We might expect this to be rather difficult, if not impossible to ascertain, given that word-internal short vowels are not typically represented in the
QCT orthography. There is one class of noun, however, for which orthographic representation of short case vowels in the nominative and genitive cases is attested, namely, those whose stem ends in *āʾ. In these stems, glides corresponding to the short case vowel occur when followed by a pronominal clitic.
when followed by a pronominal او In the nominative the sequence āʾu is represented by clitic:
’ǧazāwu-hum/ ‘their recompense/ ﺟﺰاوھﻢ Q3:87 ǧazāʾu-hum ’ʾawliyāwu-hum/ ‘their guardians/ اوﻟﯿﺎوھﻢ Q6:128 ʾawliyāʾu-hum ’šurakāwu-hum/ ‘their partners/ ﺷﺮﻛﺎوھﻢ Q6:137 šurakāʾu-hum
:اى In the genitive case, the spelling of nouns with a pronominal clitic is represented by
79 ’bi-(ʾ)aʿdāyi-kum/ ‘about your enemies/ ﺑﺎﻋﺪاﯾﻜﻢ Q4:45 bi-ʾaʕdāʾi-kum ’ʾābāyi-hum/ ‘their forefathers/ اﺑﺎﯾﮭﻢ Q6:87 ʾābāʾi-him ’bi-(ʾ)ahwāyi-hum/ ‘by their desires/ ﺑﺎھﻮاﯾﮭﻢ Q6:119 bi-ʾahwāʾi-him
either because glottal stop was ,ا The accusative case is simply represented with a single lost in this position, or because writing two alifs in a row is regularly avoided:
’ʾawliyā(ʾa)-h/ ‘his guardians/ اوﻟﯿﺎه Q3:175 ʾawliyāʾa-hū ’šufaʕā(ʾa)-kum/ ‘your partners/ ﺷﻔﻌﺎﻛﻢ Q6:94 šufaʕāʾa-kum ’ʾābā(ʾa)-nā/ ‘our fathers/ اﺑﺎﻧﺎ Q7:28 ʾābāʾa-nā
,او/ى The practice of writing representing āʾ+clitic pronoun sequences with ubiquitous in the Cairo edition, is slightly more varied in earlier manuscripts. In the CPP,
the latter ,ا or و for example, nominative āʾu + clitic is occasionally represented by either of these spellings probably suggests the occasional retention of the glottal stop, which is present in these stems in word-final position, as evidenced by the rhyme (Van Putten and
Stokes forthcoming; Van Putten forthcoming c).
Nominative
?/ǧazāʾu-hum/ ﺟﺰاھﻢ Q3:87 ?/ʾawliyāʾu-hum/ = اوﻟﯿﮭﻢ Q6:128 ?/šurakāʾu-hum/ = ﺷﺮﻛﺎھﻢ Q6:137 /ʾābāwu-kum/ اﺑﻮﻛﻢ Q4:11 /ʾābāwu-kum/ اﺑﻨﻮﻛﻢ Q4:11
:اى rather than the Cairo edition’s ى The genitive is occasionally written with just
Genitive
/bi-(ʾ)aʕdāyi-kum/ ﺑﺎﻋﺪﯾﻜﻢ Q4:45 /ʾābāyi-hum/ اﺑﯿﮭﻢ Q6:87 /bi(ʾ)ahwāyi-hum/ ﺑﺎھﻮﯾﮭﻢ Q6:119
80 When the word is in construct with a following noun, the sequence āʾ is almost always
,ا out of 547 instances; see Van Putten and Stokes forthcoming) represented by 522) regardless of syntax.
In 25 places, however, these sequences are represented with a glide. In six instances, the genitive in construct with a following noun is represented by the the same
:اى spelling as when it is followed by a clitic pronouns
ﺗﻠﻘﺎى Q10:15 tilqāʾi اﯾﺘﺎى Q16:90 ʾītāʾi اﻧﺎى Q20:130 ʾānāʾi ﺑﻠﻘﺎى Q30:8 bi-liqāʾi ﻟﻘﺎى Q30:16 liqāʾi ٰ◌ وراى Q40:51 warāʾi
It appears that the language behind the QCT had lost etymological glottal stop in most positions (Van Putten forthcoming c), and thus the occurrence of glides when followed by suffixed pronouns is naturally interpreted as representing āwu (nom) and āyi
(gen). If short case vowels had been realized, we would expect the same glide to occur word-finally as well, since those sequences would presumably be realized the same. The fact that they are not in my opinion constitutes strong evidence for their absence.
3.4.5 aʾ Nouns Like stems ending in *āʾv, stems ending in *aʾv are also frequently spelled with glides corresponding to etymologically short case vowels. Their orthography largely overlaps with the āʾv class. There are two nouns in the Qurʾān which are clearly CaCaʾ type nouns: malaʾ and nabaʾ. When suffixed with a clitic pronoun, they are only attested
81 when in construct with a following noun, nominative is written ;اى in the genitive, spelled
:اى and genitive as ,وا
Nominative (ﯾﺎﯾﮭﺎ اﻟﻤﻼ cf. Q12:43) ﯾﺎﯾﮭﺎ اﻟﻤﻠﻮا Q27:29 -cf. the identical context in the same Sura: Q23:32 qāla l) ﻗﺎل اﻟﻤﻠﻮا Q23:24 qāla l-malaʾu (ﻗﺎل اﻟﻤﻼ malaʾu cf. Q9:70 ʾa-lam yaʾtihim nabaʾu) اﻟﻢ ﯾﺎﺗﻜﻢ ﻧﺒﻮا اﻟﺬﯾﻦ Q14:9 ʾa-lam yaʾti-kum nabaʾu llaḏīna (اﻟﻢ ﯾﺎﺗﮭﻢ ﻧﺒﺎ اﻟﺬﯾﻦ llaḏīna ﻧﺒﻮا ﻋﺰﯾﻢ Q38:67 nabaʾun ʕaẓīmun
Genitive إﻟﻰ ﻓﺮﻋﻮن وﻣﻼﯾﮫ Q10:75=43:46 ﻣﻦ ﻧﺒﺎى اﻟﻤﺮﺳﻠﯿﻦ Q6:34
Additionally, the noun imraʾ is attested in the Qurʾān spelled with glides corresponding to short case vowels:
Nominative
”If a man dies“ إن اﻣﺮوا ھﻠﻚ Q4:176
Genitive
”For every man“ ﻟﻜﻞ اﻣﺮي Q80:37
In Classical Arabic, this word attests vowel harmony between the vowel of the stem and the case vowel:
Nominative - /imruʾun/ Genitive - /imriʾin/ Accusative - /imraʾan/
82 If the glottal stop had indeed been lost, and the vowel harmony characteristic of
Classical Arabic was present in the language behind the QCT, then the realization of the nominative would be /imrū/, and genitive /imrī/. It is possible, of course, that the vowel harmony was a development that did not take place in the language of the QCT, which would mean an underlying form /imraʾ/. In this case, again assuming the loss of glottal stop, the nominative would have been /imrō/ (<*imrau <*imraʾu).
3.5 ANALYSIS OF CASE DISTRIBUTION IN QCT In this chapter, I have analyzed the evidence for nominal case inflection in the
Qurʾān by relying solely on the QCT rather than the qirāʾāt traditions that formed a century or more after the life of Muḥammad. I dealt first with the concept of pausal spelling, which has for a century served as the explanation for many of the differences between the orthography of the Qurʾān and the recitations preserved in the qirāʾāt traditions. I hope to have shown that, contrary to this assumption, context spellings predominate. That is, wherever there would be a difference between pausal and context realizations of a word, we almost always find context spellings.
Plural and Dual inflection functions in the QCT as in Classical Arabic. Triptotic inflection of singular nouns is attested in the construct of the “five nouns,” again as in
and its syntactic function is essentially ,ا CA. The accusative case is represented by identical to what is found in CA. I have argued that, since this cannot be interpreted as representing /an/, that it should instead be interpreted as regularly representing /ā/. And given that /n/ is otherwise consistently represented in the orthography, the most
83 reasonable interpretation of its absence on singular nouns is an indication of loss of word-
ا final n. This is corroborated by the spelling of the ‘short’ energic form *-an as
lam/ ﻟﻢ ﯾﻚ representing /ā/, as well as the frequent realization of the jussive of kāna as yak(u)/. Further, the lack of word-final representation of high vowels, nominative /u/ and genitive /i/, suggests that word-final high vowels had been lost in the dialect behind the
Qurʾān.
The status of non-word final short vowels is more difficult to ascertain. The
on nouns ending in āʾ when followed by an اى and او consistent presence of spellings enclitic pronominal suffix suggests that short case vowels were preserved in that environment. Less certain is the status of these vowels on nouns when in construct with following nouns. While technically nouns in construct with a following noun are non- phrase final, there is much more variation in the orthography in these contexts. This might indicate a phonetic difference between N + N and N + PN, with the latter being a closer juncture, resulting in a tighter phonetic context than the former.
The relative consistency of spellings with matres lectionis when followed by a pronominal suffix, and the inconsistency in their use when a noun is in construct with another noun is reminiscent of Akkadian distribution. In Old Akkadian, nouns in construct, as well as nouns with a clitic suffix, do not retain the nominative –u or the accusative –a, but do retain genitive –i (Hasselbach 2005: 182):
84 Unbound Construct (i.e., bound form) Pron. Suffix
Nom -um -Ø (-u rare) -Ø (-u rare)
Gen -im -i -i
Acc -am -Ø -Ø
In the Old Babylonian language, however, nouns in construct had also lost genitive –i, but it was retained before pronominal suffixes (Huehnergard and Woods 2004: §4.1.2):
Unbound Construct (i.e., bound form) Pron. Suffix
Nom -um -Ø -Ø
Gen -im -Ø -i
Acc -am -Ø -Ø
Thus case vowels were completely lost on nouns in construct by the Old Babylonian period in Akkadian, but the genitive was retained before ponominal suffixes. This trend, namely for case vowels to be lost on nouns when word-final, including in construct, but retained longer on nouns when a pronominal suffix is attached, could very well be an explanation for the distribution of matres lectionis in the QCT.30 If the same explanation holds, then it would seem to suggest a closer juncture between N + PN than N + N. This close juncture led to the preservation of case vowels longest on nouns suffixed with a clitic pronoun, which is born out in the evidence from the modern dialects (see below, chapter 6). Given the variation and inconsistency, however, it is impossible to draw a definitive conclusion at this point.
30 I am very grateful to John Huehnergard for raising the issue of comparison with Akkadian forms. 85 The observations and arguments advanced here lead to the following ordered sound laws necessary to arrive at the suggested distribution:31
1) Loss of all all phrase-final short vowels: *a, *i, *u > Ø/ C_#
This affected mainly short vowels that morphosyntactically mark verbal moods,
as well as final /a/ on external masculine plural, short final /i/ on the dual
morpheme and, most significantly for our purposes, the case vowels of definite
nouns. Since nouns in construct form a phonetic unit, short vowels on non-final
members of construct chains were not phrase final, and thus were protected.
2) Loss of word-final nasals following short, unstressed vowels
This change would thus not affect external masculine plural -ūn/-īn or
monosyllabic words such as man ‘who’ which were almost certainly stressed.
Others, such as the preposition min ‘from’ was essentially always in construct
and, thus, never truly word-final. We would, however, expect short /vn/ sequences
to be lost, namely in cases like Q26:36 ẖazāʾin ‘storehouses’ and Q57:3 al-bāṭinu
‘the inner.’ These forms were presumably preserved by analogy with the singular
forms. This is probably also the explanation for alternation in jussive forms of kān
(lam yaku/lam yakun; see above section 4).
3) Loss of final short high vowels: *u,*i > Ø/ C_#
31 An alternative possibility, one which does allow for analogical restoration, is as follows (Al-Jallad and Al-Manaser 2015): 1) an/in/un > ā/ĩ/ũ 2) a/i/u/ĩ/ũ > Ø The weakness of this reconstruction is in the rather ad hoc nature of the shift of in/un > ĩ/ũ, but an > ā. Thus I prefer the following reconstruction. 86 There remains one issue that requires comment, namely the length of the accusative singular, which I have reconstructed, partly for convenience, as /ā/. Scholarly reconstructions usually posit a lengthening after the loss of nasalization. The
,has often been interpreted as decisive. As noted above ا representation of this vowel with however, the Nabataean script, from which the Arabic script developed, represented all final vowels, whether etymologically short or long. Another possibility is that, following the loss of most etymologically short vowels, the length contrast in final position was lost
(reminiscent of the pausal phenomenon in the Arabic qaṣīda).
These proposals elegantly account for the distribution of the attested features through well-established sound changes. The result is that the distribution usually posited for pause, namely un/in > Ø and an > ā/a, affects every word, whether in context or pause.
3.6 ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATIONS My argument so far has rested on the assumption that the orthography of the QCT was used to represent, as accurately as possible, the oral reality of the Qurʾān as it existed at the earliest stage of its existence. It is, of course, possible that there was a rather significant mismatch between the register or variety in which the Qurʾān was recited and the language behind the orthography which was used to represent it textually. In this section, I will review argumentation in support of such a hypothesis, as well as the assumptions upon which it rests.
87 A mismatch between the orthography used to write the Qurʾān and the variety in which it was recited first and foremost requires that we posit that the language in which the Qurʾān was recited was one not normally written. More significantly, we would need to posit that the rules governing the orthographic representation be set rather firmly. That varieties of Arabic existed that differed to one degree or another from the dialect(s) of the scribal tradition(s) of the region is uncontroversial. There is also no doubt that certain conventions governed the practice of representing certain sounds. In early Qurʾānic manuscripts the orthography, reflecting its Nabataean origin, rarely represents long /ā/ internally, but long high vowels (/ū/ and /ī/) were consistently represented (Cantineau
1978: 46-8). Final vowels are always represented word-finally (Diem 1973: 223 et passim). Such conventions are indeed a part of all script traditions. North Arabian variants of the South Arabian script do not represent vowels with matres lectionis, with the probable exception of Dadanitic (F. Kootstra, personal communication). Diphthongs are usually, but not always, represented word-finally in Safaitic, but never word- internally (Al-Jallad 2015a: §2.3). Thus the conventions for writing in each script tradition were part of the practice of writing that was learned, even outside of formal scribal training.32
The use of a script tradition that carried with it strict rules of writing, and therefore did not allow modification to fit a different variety, is of course that of Classical
Arabic. Early in the Islamic period when Classical Arabic was codified as the language of
32 No formal scribal schools can be associated with, e.g., Safaitic or Ḥismaic, which were used almost exclusively among nomads in southern Syria and Jordan. Nevertheless, the majority of inscriptions written in these two scripts is very formulaic, and follows conventions quite consistently. 88 the early Islamic empires (beginning in the 8th-9th centuries CE / 2nd - 3rd centuries
AH), the script that had been used to write the Qurʾān was used to write CA as well. As the script did not represent nunation, it was not represented for CA either, despite the fact that CA nouns regularly attest this feature. It is thus not a priori implausible that an orthographic tradition was used to write the QCT, the conventions of which did not reflect the language behind the QCT particularly well.
The difference here, however, is that CA orthography followed the Qurʾānic orthography, which by the codification of CA had become fixed and not subject to drastic change. Further, the assumption among the Muslims of this period (as it still is) that the language of the Qurʾān was essentially identical to CA further cemented this orthographic transfer. While it is of course possible that the orthography of the Ḥijāz had been fixed by the 7th century CE, we have no evidence to support that, and several pieces of evidence argue against it. First, there is a good deal of variation in the orthography of the inscriptions in Nehmé’s ‘transitional script’ category (2010: 48-54; 2017). Pre-Qurʾānic inscriptions written in Nabataean thus suggest no fixed rules for writing in Nabataean, whether in Aramaic or Arabic, other than the aforementioned conventions for representing certain vowels.
The orthography of the QCT, as attested in the early manuscript traditions, argues against the existence of a fixed set of rules that governed writing throughout the Ḥijāz. As
I argued above, we can no longer appeal to the principle of pausal spelling. Further, the variation in representing certain vowels, and other phonetic sequences among the early manuscripts suggest both variation in precisely how to represent them on the one hand, 89 but that the same phonetic reality was the target on the other. For example, as discussed above, there are differences between the Cairo Edition and the CPP when representing the sequence āʾv (or perhaps āw/yv), cf. Q42:40 (Van Putten and Stokes forthcoming):
”jzwʾ syyh> “the recompense of an evil act> ﺟﺰوا ﺳﯿﯿﮫ Cairo
”jzʾw syyh> “idem> ﺟﺰاو ﺳﯿﯿﮫ CPP
Had there been a fixed set of rules that regulated the representation of these and other sequences across the Ḥijāz, such variation would be unexpected. Another example is within the CPP itself. Déroche (2014: 18-20) notes that five different scribes participated in the creation of the codex, and each represented long ā a bit differently. For example, he follows the spelling of ʿaḏāb “punishmen,” across the different ‘hands,’ and found that
Hand A used defective spelling (that is, a spelling practice that left long ā unrepresented orthographically) almost ubiquitously, whereas Hand C almost always spelled the long ā plene, except when followed by the alif of the accusative (ibid., 22).
These few examples suffice to illustrate that, while certain conventions consistently govern the Nabataean script from its earliest examples until its transformation into the ‘Arabic script’ in the 6th and 7th centuries CE, there was a good deal of variation when representing certain sequences and no fixed rules that regulated writing over the whole area. Rather, it seems more probable that the Nabataean script was developed in various scribal traditions in the cities of the Ḥijāz, which shared certain inherited conventions, but who were also not bound by the rules of one central authority.
If the orthography was flexible enough to represent the phonetic reality underlying nunation and case vowels, and there were no rules governing the orthography 90 such that a feature characteristic of the language would intentionally not be represented, the only other possible explanation to a purported mismatch between orthography and language is an ad hoc intentional decision to not represent this feature. The reason behind such a decision is impossible to determine without contextual data. It is of course possible that the compilers of the QCT wanted to make room for a number of possible traditions for the recitation of the Qurʾān, from those, like the canonized reading traditions, which possessed full case and nunation, to those with partial or no case marking. We would expect with such a decision that no case would be represented at all, whereas the QCT consistently marks CA-like case with long case vowels, and indefinite accusative on singular triptotic nouns. I cannot see why such an idiosyncratic system was chosen if the goal was to make room for multiple reading traditions. If, on the other hand, the Qurʾān was from the beginning associated with a CA-like performance register, which possessed full case marking and nunation, it is unclear why that system would not be represented. Not only would it have the prestige of such a highly regarded register, it would also have the added prestige of being associated with the earliest recitation.
3.7 LANGUAGE VARIETY OF THE QCT I return now to a discussion of the language variety behind the QCT in light of the evidence reviewed above. The analysis offered suggests that the variety behind the QCT did indeed possess case inflection, but, due to regular sound changes, the case inflection behind the QCT was not identical to the system found in Classical Arabic poetry and prose. Thus the reality falls in between the two traditional scholarly positions. On the one hand, Vollers and Donner are correct in arguing that the language behind the QCT differs 91 in a number of ways from the later reading traditions that developed. On the other hand,
Vollers’ and Owens’ arguments that the Qurʾān did not possess case at all is clearly contradicted by a close study of the text.
The implications of this analysis for our understanding of the transmission of the
Qurʾān are far-reaching and significant. Due to limitations of scope and space, however, I will focus here on questions concerning the linguistic implications. Perhaps most importantly, our discussion raises the question of the relationship between the variety behind the QCT and the dialect(s) of the Ḥijāz. We can no longer argue that it was produced in the same poetic register behind the pre-Islamic odes (muʿallaqāt). Our analysis does not rule out, however, that it was produced in essentially a variety of the local colloquial dialect. It is undeniable that the stylistics of the Qurʾān are performative.
That is, it is undeniable that the structure and apparent rhyme of the Qurʾān was intended for oral performance, and not intended to be (primarily) read. While it is of course impossible to determine, we might speculate that the phonology, morphology and syntax of the spoken register and performance register in the Ḥijāz were essentially the same. An example of such a situation is found in the case of contemporary Nabaṭī poetry. Nabaṭī poetry is a poetic tradition shared by bedouin tribes in NW Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the
Sinai which is essentially a stylized form of the spoken dialects of its poets (Holes and
Abu Athera 2009: 1-3; 40-3). That is, the phonology, morphology, and even syntax is identical with features in the spoken dialects. Interestingly, poets often prepare nabaṭī poetry for important occasions, such as the visit of a king or foreign dignitary (e.g., ibid.,
92 84-7). It is possible that the language behind the QCT was such a stylized register of the local dialect. The significant point to be made, regardless of the exact relationship between the variety behind the QCT and the spoken dialect(s) of the Ḥijāz, is that the assumptions of most scholarship - that either the language represents the poetic language behind Classical Arabic, or a local dialect that had lost all case inflection - are again overly simplistic.
Finally, these findings are relevant for the debate over whether or not the origin of the Qurʾān is heterogenous, combining material from more than one individual, or one person, as the ubiquitous Islamic historiography narrates. Most of the arguments for the heterogeneous nature of the Qurʾānic material are non-linguistic (cf. Gilliot 2008 for the theological and historical arguments for such a proposition). As has become clear from the discussion above, case marking is for the most part regular throughout, with a few exceptions. One such exception is Q33, where it was noted that either a different rhyme was used, or a different scribal tradition stands behind this sūra. Whether this evidence is sufficient to argue for a heterogenous origin to the Qurān, or rather reflects a rare application of poetic rhyme is impossible to determine.
3.8 VARIETY OF QCT IN CONTEXT OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIC If, as I have argued above, the orthography of the QCT is intended to represent the reality behind the earliest recitation tradition, then the case system of the QCT is clearly not identical to that of CA. It is, however, clearly derived from it via a few sound laws.
The developments from the proto-Arabic case attested in the QCT are very reminiscent of
93 those we saw in the pre-Islamic epigraphic record from the Levant and NW Arabia. First, as with most varieties attested in the epigraphy, the variety behind the QCT attests the loss of tanwīn. Like Safaitic, the accusative remained active, and it appears that both corpora attest the loss of explicit marking of nominative and genitive via case markers as the result of the loss of final short high vowels. As we saw in chapter 2, however, the epigraphic record suggests the loss of case marking in most southern Levantine varieties by the period of the QCT. In that way, then, the variety behind the QCT is more conservative. Even in the southern Ḥijāz, however, we have a variety that attests losses that are traditionally held to be the result of the Islamic conquests and non-native speaker acquisition. Not only is that a priori unlikely in this case, it is also unwarranted. After all,
Hebrew and Aramaic lost case completely before historical attestation of those languages begins, and yet no one appeals to non-native acquisition for those processes. One of the themes of this dissertation is that the only reason that regnant theories of case loss in
Arabic are so ubiquitous is because of the Islamic narrative that western scholars have adopted. The evidence from the pre-Islamic period, in which I include the QCT, is that case loss occurred in a variety of ways over a relatively protracted period of time. While it impossible to determine the exact impetuses for these developments, undoubtedly a combination of phonetic and structural/systemic explanations played a role. Finally, the diversity of the pre-Islamic evidence suggests a range of registers and traditions quite probably continued in some places and among some communities. Not only does this change our understanding and the framework in which we study the pre-Islamic
94 evidence, it has profound implications for how we might understand the Arabic data from the Islamic period. It is to the Islamic period corpora that we now shift our attention.
95 CHAPTER 4: CASE MARKING IN MIDDLE ARABIC TEXTS
4.1. INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS MIDDLE ARABIC? This chapter represents a first attempt to change the framework within which the heterogeneous corpora typically labelled ‘Middle Arabic’ is analyzed and understood. As
I will discuss, previous treatments of these corpora have assumed that any non-CA feature, which is simultaneously attested in modern dialects, reflects an intrusion from the spoken variety of the author. Further, most scholars have assumed that non-CA features which are not found in modern dialects reflect hypercorrections. The effect of such assumptions has been, essentially, that the prevailing framework has retrojected the contemporary diglossia of colloquial dialects on the low end, and CA as the official register, back into the earliest centuries of Islam. This chapter will argue for a different framework, one that reflects the growing scholarly awareness of non-CA registers from the Levant and western Arabia in the pre-Islamic period. Specifically, I will analyze the function of what is etymologically the accusative case (represented orthographically by alif) across these corpora. I hope to show that the non-CA distribution of case marking across time and space reflects natural developments, and that appeal to hypercorrection is in general not necessary.
4.1.1 Linguistic Nature of MA texts The term ‘Middle Arabic’ (henceforth MA) as used by most scholars refers to a vast and heterogeneous body of literature written in Arabic, beginning already in the 7th century AD and continuing until at least the 19th or early 20th centuries (Lentin 2008:
216-7). Specifically, literature referred to as MA is characterized by what is generally
96 explained as a combination of ‘Classical’ and colloquial features (ibid., 217). Not surprisingly, sustained investigation of these corpora, and their linguistic analysis, has generated a great deal of debate. The most fundamental debate concerns the nature of this literature, and its relationship to other attested forms of Arabic. Most scholars up until the mid-twentieth century treated MA literature as historically and chronologically ‘middle,’ that is, that it represented a linguistically middle stage in the development from Old
Arabic (or often CA) to Neo-Arabic, meaning the modern Arabic dialects (first H. L.
Fleischer 1888). Joshua Blau (JA: 1-19), one of the founding scholars of the modern field of MA studies, has argued that this ‘middle’ phase of Arabic began as a result of the
Muslim conquests in the 7th century AD. Before then, Blau’s argument goes, Arabic speakers were largely isolated from outside influence, and the Arabic language remained relatively archaic. Due to the conquests and the spread of Arabic across a great geographic distance, and its imperfect acquisition by non-native speakers, the typology of
Arabic was changed, from synthetic to analytic. In this traditional reading, MA represents the intermediate stage between Old Arabic (including Classical Arabic) and the Neo-
Arabic phase. Or, as Blau puts it, “Middle Arabic is the missing link between Classical
Arabic and the modern Arabic dialects” (Blau 1966: i).
Subsequently, other scholars began to challenge the assumption that the traditions attested in MA literature ought be considered a separate lect. In his article entitled “What is Middle Arabic?” (1991), W. Fischer argues against understanding MA as a distinct linguistic entity. Instead, he suggests that anything non-CA should be considered Neo-
Arabic, and whether a given text should be considered MA or not depends upon the 97 author’s supposed familiarity with, and competence in, CA. If the author is competent in producing correct CA, Fischer argues that any NA features should be attributed to negligence, and such a text cannot represent MA. Rather, he suggests that MA texts are those whose author(s) is only basically familiar with CA structures, and which therefore attests NA features and hypercorrections/hypocorrections (Fischer 1991: 434). Thus
Fischer represents a transitional understanding of MA, though he, like Blau and Fleisch before him, believes that, if any CA features are attested, this must mean that CA was the target. Given the evidence reviewed in chs. 2 and 3 above, however, such an assumption must now be seriously reconsidered.
Over the past quarter century, the study of MA as a historical philological tradition has become intertwined with the study of ‘Mixed Arabic,’ which address the sociolinguistic contexts and aims of the use of colloquial and classical/standard features in written and oral communication in the modern period. Scholars of contemporary
Mixed Arabic (henceforth MxA) have largely abandoned the notion of MA as representing a historical stage of the language, and begun rather to conceptualize it purely sociolinguistically, as literary medium whose features are not random or determined by lacunae in the author’s knowledge of CA (cf. Grand’Henry 1981; Lentin 2004; Larcher
2001; Bellem and Smith 2014). Work among scholars in this camp has especially focused on identifying patterns of mixing CA and non-CA features, and thus ultimately to what degree MA can be considered a linguistic system with its own rules. Bellem and Smith
(2014), for example, briefly analyze the language in Ibn al-Mujāwir’s 13th century AD travelogue, Tārīẖ al-Mustabṣir, and conclude that the mixing of these features in his 98 work is “not entirely arbitrary,” and that, despite a good deal of variation, “there is a considerable degree of systematicity in some aspects related to this mixing” (15).
Explicit in each of these scholarly approaches to the study of MA literature is the belief that there has always existed, since the earliest Islamic centuries at least, a spectrum of Arabic that is comprised of CA on the one hand, and the colloquial dialects on the other. These colloquial elements are typically identified by their absence from (or at least their marginal attestation in) CA texts on the one hand, and their presence in modern dialects on the other. This point is important and bears repeating: purportedly colloquial elements in historical documents are identified on the basis of their presence in contemporary dialects. CA is assumed to be the only pre- and early Islamic literary or performative register, and other registers that appear in the Islamic period represent new creations based on the combination - intentionally (cf. Mejdel 2008) or out of ignorance
(Fischer 1991) - of classical and new ‘colloquial’ features.
The possibility that the constellation of features and structures attested in MA texts continues a tradition (or traditions) that was in many ways independent of CA is never considered. Based on the pre-Islamic material surveyed in chapter two, as well as the Qurʾān itself in chapter three, that possibility must now be considered just as likely, if not more so, than the traditional dichotomy.
Another aspect of the current discussion around the nature of MA that deserves critique is the popular conceptualization of a particular corpus as linguistically distinct.
Benjamin Hary, for example, claims that Judaeo-Arabic represents an “independent linguistic entity that refers to a language or a variety, has its own history and 99 development, and is used by a distinct ethnic speech community” (Hary 2003: 62). There is no doubt that the literature written by Jews for other Jews, mostly in the Hebrew script, reflects a broad cultural/literary tradition (Khan 2007; forthcoming). However, as Khan notes, though distinct, Judaeo-Arabic is “by no means a uniform linguistic entity and is used to refer both to written forms of Arabic and also to spoken dialects” (Khan 2007:
526). This point is important and deserves to be stressed. Works like Blau’s A grammar of Medieval Judaeo-Arabic and The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-
Arabic ultimately create the false impression that these corpora are defined by a set of established linguistic innovations or cluster of features that unite them all. Such assumptions in turn lead scholars to attempt to harmonize all data concerning any given feature instead of highlighting conflicting patterns and offering alternative possibilities for each.
In many ways, the category of MA is negatively defined - literature which attests features that are not CA, or are not correct CA. Until these corpora are shown to share innovative linguistic features, we must be careful to distinguish between a cultural- literary set of traditions, which the various MA corpora clearly are, and a linguistic entity, which has yet to be demonstrated. This also holds for the modern dialects. Scholars have proposed features common to all dialects (cf. Ferguson 1959; Versteegh 1997), but few if any are in fact common to all dialects. Nevertheless, it is still quite common to treat all dialects as forming a linguistic subgroup over against Classical Arabic (or Old Arabic), usually on the basis of the absence of nominal case marking in the dialects and the supposed linguistic changes this absence produces (cf. Blau JA et passim; Versteegh 100 1997; Owens 2006; Retsö 2013). Just as no innovations have been shown to link all modern dialects as a genetic unit, there has also been no work demonstrating linguistically innovative features uniting all MA. Rather, the defining characteristic of
MA in most scholarly discussions seems to be negative; that is, it is not perfect CA, nor does it look completely like modern dialectal Arabic.
The present chapter proposes an alternative approach to analyzing the rich and varied data of MA by examining one nominal case (accusative) marking across a diverse range of MA texts. I mean by accusative here the etymological accusative case, marked by a suffixed alif. We will see that it does not mark most of the typical functions of the accusative in, e.g., CA. Further, I distinguish between the functions of this case, marked
אן / אין by alif, from the cases where a (usually separate) an/in, written in Hebrew script
or with tanwīn an (Blau JA 174 et passim). These latter forms and their ان and in ChA distribution will be the subject of chapter 5. I will also not discuss case marking on, e.g., plurals, where the vast majority of attested forms represent a merger to the oblique īn (cf. examples from Blau JA and Hopkins 1984: §164-170).33
The topic of nominal case marking in MA literature is complex, but, as I will show, the distribution suggests a set of linguistic developments that is neither CA, nor attested in the modern Arabic dialects. Further I will argue that the deviations from the case system as attested in CA, which we saw in chapter one is archaic in most of its
33 This topic deserves further study, but unfortunately the grammars and treatments of these features do not explore the topic except to say that any attestations of etymologically nominative ūn represent hypercorrections. The framework argued for here eschews such conclusions unless definitively demonstrated. I hope in a future project to provide such a sensitive study of MA texts. We might note, however, that the merger of nominative and oblique cases in the plural is expected even with developments, discussed below, where the role of the accusative case was expanded and developed on singular forms. 101 characteristics, can be explained by analogies and developments that make sense in the context of real language use. As such, I will challenge the dominant characterization of these differences as hyper/hypocorrections and instead argue that they strongly suggest an independent linguistic system that has some affinities with earlier-attested forms of
Arabic.
I will also argue that it is unlikely that CA played the deciding role often attributed to it in the makeup of MA case distribution. In a forthcoming work on the
Psalm Fragment, Al-Jallad (forthcoming e) has proposed that the dialect that spread in the
Islamic conquests was, by and large, identical to a Ḥijāzī literary language. He notes that the orthography of the early Islamic papyri is largely identical to that of the QCT. He further shows that many of the characteristic features of the literature of the Islamic period were probably Ḥijāzī. As we saw in chapter 3, the variety of the QCT was characterized by a case system, but that on singular indefinite nouns only the accusative was regularly morphosyntactically represented. Thus the system in MA, which represents accusative, but not nominative or genitive,34 can already be understood as continuing a partial case system attested in the QCT and early epigraphy and papyri, possibly based on
Ḥijāzī or southern Levantine dialects. I will argue below that the functions of the accusative in MA, when not reflecting a functional case system, can be explained through
34 One could counter that Christian Arabic (ChA), for example, which was written using the Arabic script, would only mark the accusative on indefinite nouns. Thus there is no way to be sure that nominative and genitive were not in fact realized when reading, as with CA. This is true for ChA. Early Judaeo-Arabic (JA), however, was often written in a phonetic spelling, which did not conform to the conventions typical of CA. As we shall see below, nominative and genitive are not written on indefinite nouns (Blau and Hopkins 1987: 154). Further, when texts are vocalized, nominative and genitive are never represented (Khan 2007). 102 natural developments. Thus no appeal to CA is necessary unless one assumes a priori that CA would be the target variety. I avoid this assumption, unless no other plausible solution is forthcoming, for the reasons given above (and further discussed in context of the material, below).35
4.1.2 Corpora Given the range of definitions for the term MA, there is obviously no consensus on which literature should and should not be considered MA. The vast majority of the literature heretofore studied in treatments of MA was produced by religious minority communities, namely Christians and Jews. Muslims also produced literature typically considered MA, such as ʿIzz ad-Dīn at-Tanūẖi (10th century AD), as well as popular
‘folk’ literature, such as The Thousand and One Nights. While literature produced by
Muslims typically held to CA norms more than JA and ChA texts, this may in fact be due to subsequent ‘corrections.’ The manuscript history of The Thousand and One Nights illustrates one such case (Mahdi 1984), and Brustad (2017) notes that the same apparently occurred with Usāma ibn Munqiḏ’s Kitāb al-iʿtibār, many of whose manuscripts were published with the word taṣḥīḥ, “correction,” in the title. Thus non-CA structures might have been much more common even among Muslim writers, but the tendency to
35 That is not to say that there are no examples of texts that represent attempts by the author to write CA, but where the author’s spoken variety surfaces, resulting in a non-standard or hypercorrect form. I mean here rather that this should not, in my opinion, be the default interpretation of this whole body of literature, and should rather be demonstrated by some set of historically and linguistically grounded criteria. Further, regarding the case system, scholars have typically appealed only to hypercorrection, since to invoke influence from the spoken dialect of a particular author would be to assume the existence of case (albeit in some way(s) differenct from CA) in spoken varieties of the medieval period. To my knowledge, no scholar argues this is the case. 103 published corrected editions was presumably stronger among Muslims than it was among
Jews and Christians.
Distinguishing between texts properly considered CA or MA is perhaps much more difficult than is generally assumed. Blau (2001), for example, distinguishes between what he calls ‘post-classical Arabic’ and MA proper, with the former being almost totally
(but not completely) devoid of deviations from CA in orthography and morphology, whereas the latter contains more consistent deviations (p. 4, n. 12). In some cases, Blau distinguishes between ‘standard’ and ‘substandard’ varieties of MA, with the former seemingly closer to ‘post-classical Arabic’ with few deviations from CA, and the latter being riddled with deviations. Hary (1989: 64) argued that ‘multiglossia’, rather than diglossia, as more appropriate for conceptualizing the relationships between CA on one end, JA (and other MA corpora) and the colloquial dialects on the other end of the spectrum. For Hary, rather than two different language types existing in distinct forms,
Arabic exists along a cline between CA on the high end to colloquial dialects on the low end, and MA exists insofar as colloquial, CA and hypercorrect features mingle in a single text. These and other attempts to define and describe the corpus of MA have remained largely theoretical (unsoundly in many cases), and virtually no quantitative works has been done.36
The two main sources of MA are literature written by Christians and Jews in the middle ages. The ChA literature consists primarily of texts from southern Palestine dating
36 I hope to expand my present investigation to include such quantitative work in the near future. One of the main challenges of working through scholarly treatments of this literature is the almost complete absence of statistical representations of what is ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ for any given corpus. 104 to the 9th - 10th centuries AD. These texts were produced and preserved in local monasteries, and the vast majority currently available was found at St. Catherine’s
Monastery in the Sinai, Egypt (Blau JA: 193). As Blau (ibid) notes, while valuable, these texts largely consist of biblical translations, and thus their linguistic analysis must take into account interference from the source language(s).
JA is much better attested than ChA, and over a much longer period covering a much wider geographic span. Scholars of JA typically divide the attested literature into three periods: Early JA (9th - 10th centuries AD), Classical Judaeo-Arabic (10th - 15th centuries AD), and Late Judaeo-Arabic (15th - 20th centuries) (Khan 2007: 526-7). Early
Judaeo-Arabic consists mainly of private documents written on papyrus, though some incomplete literary texts are attested (ibid.). Interestingly, the orthography of these early
JA papyri, dating mostly to the 8th-10th centuries CE, is written using a phonetic spelling instead of being patterned on more standard orthography. Thus, al-salām “peace,
as it is during the classical and late JA ,אלסל(א)ם instead of אסלם greeting,” is written periods. Classical Judaeo-Arabic consists of a wide variety of texts from various centers of Jewish learning, including Baghdad and Egypt. Late Judaeo-Arabic is characterized by a marked reduction in genres and sophistication as cultural and social factors led to a revival of the use of Hebrew as a literary medium in Jewish communities across the
Middle East and N. Africa (Fenton 1990: 464).
The material analyzed below is taken primarily from the existing scholarly literature, especially Blau JA and ASP; Hopkins 1984; and Wagner 2010, with other sources cited where meaningful. I will also consider the Psalm Fragment, which has been 105 the subject of two recent studies by Corriente (2007) and Al-Jallad (forthcoming d).
While these sources allow for a broad overview of some of the most commonly studied and cited examples of MA, this chapter cannot claim anything approaching comprehensiveness. Rather, I hope to show that this disparate body of papyri and texts attests a remarkable degree of continuity in the distribution of nominal case, continuity that has yet to be properly integrated into the discussion of the historical development of this feature in Arabic.
4.2 CASE IN MA LITERATURE Case marking in MA literature has received a great deal of scholarly attention.
The most extensive is found in Blau (JA: 19-50, 167-212; ASP: §215-228; 1983).
Hopkins (1984: §161-170) also contains a detailed discussion, although he largely follows the Blau’s interpretation despite covering a different corpus of texts and inscriptions. Another recent treatment is found in Wagner (2010: 175-88), who also follows Blau, though again, working on different corpora, namely letters and personal documents from the Cairo Geniza. Other analyses will be cited in the discussion below.
As with MA in general, two major positions with regard to case marking in MA literature have formed. In the first, articulated by Blau, Hopkins and Wagner, instances of case marking, especially the accusative, are hypocorrections and hypercorrections. For these scholars, the only instances that can legitimately be considered living are apparently only those that correspond to forms attested in modern (mainly bedouin) dialects.37
37 This is of course extremely problematic methodologically. 106 The second approach, which generally, though not perfectly, tends to overlap with those scholars studying MA as a literary medium on its own terms, takes a largely agnostic approach to the identity of many of these features (cf. Lentin 2008: 220). Some scholars in this camp, however, argue explicitly against any identification of these features and CA case (cf. Owens 2006). Any feature attested is thus reconstructed to pre-
Islamic Arabia based on its synchronic function.
In what follows, I will review the primary manifestations of case marking in these corpora, with a focus on the accusative singular. Such a focus is appropriate given the dearth of evidence for nominative and genitive on singular nouns in texts written in the
Arabic script, and the absence of overt marking in the Hebrew script. Further, the present chapter will concentrate on the role of the so-called tanwīn alif, which represents etymological accusative, which developed to mark functions beyond those associated with accusative in CA (though with some exceptions; see below section 4.2.5). The related but separate morpheme an/in, attested in the Judaeo-Arabic corpora, as well as
Muslim folk literature such as 1001 Nights, but virtually absent in ChA, will be the topic of the subsequent chapter. This is mainly for two reasons. First, as we will see below, there distributions of the two phenomena are distinct38. Second, use of the morpheme an/in is also quite common in modern dialects, and has attracted much more scholarly attention than the topic of the present chapter. It therefore deserves its own treatment.
38 In fact, in JA the morpheme an/in is written separately from the end of the word, whereas the tanwīn alif is always a suffix (Baneth 1945; Blau JA: 170 ff.). 107 Given the extensive scholarly attention paid to alif tanwīn in these MA corpora, a fair amount of review will be necessary. Given the extensive scholarly attention paid to alif tanwīn in these MA corpora, a fair amount of review will be necessary. I will argue that many of the attested functions of the accusative, the primary case for which we have clear data, can be derived through regular analogical processes from the case system discussed in chapter 1, and antecedents for which are indeed attested in CA literature.
Ultimately, I will argue that the functions of tanwīn alif, many remarkably consistent across time and corpora, strongly suggest different traditions, which probably extend back into the pre-Islamic period.
There are three39 patterns of case marking attested in MA literature; I will discuss each in turn below, providing examples and historical discussion afterwards:
1) Absence of case marking: A large number of MA texts do not attest any
morphosyntactic case marking. In other cases, limited case marking is attested,
but optionally so.
2) CA case: While in the minority, the CA case system is well attested, though
often apparently optional40, in texts that attest it. Blau et al do not devote
substantial comment to considering why some texts optionally mark case
according to CA norms optionally, while leaving it off in other instances.
39 This excludes the morpheme an/in, which Blau treats together with these examples. In this dissertation, I will treat it separately in the next chapter for two reasons. First, it does not function synchronically to mark case, and second, it is widespread in modern dialects, also in non-case-marking functions. Thus in order to avoid discussing it twice, I will dedicate a separate chapter to its distribution and diachronic development. 40 I use the word ‘optional’ here because the choice of when to use CA case and when not to must have been a conscious one. In other words, I do not think an argument could be made that its non-use in some contexts was due to a mistake. I do not, however, have an idea at the moment as to what the reason behind its use in some cases, and absence in others, means. I hope to address that point in a future study. 108 3) non-classical case marking: There are a number of functions of the accusative,
marked by tanwīn alif, which since Blau (1969; 1981) have been interpreted as
hypercorrections or hypocorrections. I argue rather that they are part of a
generally consistent development, generally toward the practice of marking
sentence complements.
In the following sections (4.2.1-4.2.3), I will review three patterns of case marking in MA texts, 1) Absence of morphosyntactic case (or Ø-marked case), 2) CA-like case, and 3) non-CA like case. It will be clear from this review that MA corpora reflect linguistically heterogenous developments. Following a review of these examples, I will argue that the third category represents natural development from the case system reconstructed in chapter 1, rather than hypercorrections, as it typically argued.
4.2.1 Absence of Morphosyntactic Case In many of the MA texts published to date, nominal case marking by short vowels is completely absent. For texts written in the Arabic script, this means that nouns that would be marked with tanwīn alif are not marked thus. Examples from the early papyri, all taken from Hopkins (1984: §167)41, show that this pattern dates at least from the 7th and continues through the 10th centuries CE / 1st through 4th Islamic centuries:
41 Hopkins’s ‘grammar’, like Blau’s et al for ChA and JA, is more of a collection of non-CA features. He does not, for example, include any statistical context for the examples he provides. We thus have no real idea from his presentation whether the examples he gives are very rare, only somewhat so, or are in fact quite common. Further, he does not seriously consider any alternative explanations for the distribution of non-CA features he encounters; they are attributed solely to hypercorrection. As I have mentioned, my goal in this chapter is to provide a different framework within which these examples might be understood and interpreted historically. In the future, I plan to address these shortcomings by providing statistical and contextual data, as well as providing a more nuanced discussion of the distribution across time and space. 109 وﻗﺮون ﻣﻨﺎ اﻟﺴﻠﻢ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺳﻼﻣﺔ واﻣﮭﺎ ﻛﺜﯿﺮ (1 wa-qrūn minnā al-salām ʿalā Salāmah wa-ʾumm-hā kaṯīr “And greet Salāmah and her mother greatly on our behalf!” kaṯīr instead of kaṯīran
اﻧﻤﺎ وﺟﮭﺘﻨﻲ ﺷﺮﯾﻚ ﻣﻌﮫ (2 ʾinnamā waǧǧata-nī šarīk maʿa-hū “You sent me only to be a partner with him” šarīk instead of šarīkan
ان ﯾﺮى أﺣﺪ ﻓﻲ ﻋﻤﻠﻚ ﺷﺎي ﯾﻜﺮھﮫ (3 ʾan yarā ʾaḥad fī ʿamal-ak šayʾ yakrah-uh “That anybody should see in your administration anything of which he may disapprove,” šāy instead of šayan
ﻓﻌﺠﻞ ﻣﺎ ﻛﻨﺖ ﺑﺎﻋﺚ ﺑﮫ (4 fa-ʿaǧǧil mā kunta bāʿiṯ bi-hi “So hasten what you were going to send” bāʿiṯ instead of bāʾiṯan
ان ﻟﮫ ﺷﺎن ﻏﯿﺮ ذﻟﻚ (5 ʾan la-hū šān ġayr ḏālik “That he has a different matter,” šaʾn (or šān) instead of šaʾnan
6) ﺛﻠﺜﺔ ﻋﺸﺮ دﯾﻨﺮ ṯalāṯah ʿašar dīnār “Thirteen dinars” dīnār instead of dīnāran
Examples from Christian Arabic written in Palestine between the 9th-1oth centuries CE, taken from Blau (ASP: §221.3) include:
داﯾﻢ (7 "Always” dāyim instead of dāyiman
ﺻﺒﺎح وﻣﺴﺎ (8 110 "Morning and evening” ṣabāḥ and masā instead of ṣabāḥan and masāʾan42
ﺟﻤﯿﻊ (9 "Altogether” jamīʿ instead of jamīʿan
ﻟﯿﻞ وﻧﮭﺎر (10 “Night and day” layl wa-nahār instead of laylan wa-nahāran
ﺻﻮروا ﺻﻮر (11 ṣawwarū ṣuwar "They drew pictures” ṣuwar instead of ṣuwaran
ﻧﻌﻨﻲ ﺑﮫ اﻟﮫ ﺣﻲ ذوا43 روح (12 naʿnī bi-hi ʾilāh ḥayy ḏū rūḥ "And we mean by it a living God, who has a living spirit” ʾilāh ḥayy instead of ʾilāhan ḥayyan
ﻓﺮﺣﻮا ﻓﺮح ﻋﻈﯿﻢ (13 faraḥū faraḥ ʿaẓīm “They rejoiced with a great job,” faraḥ ʿaẓīm instead of faraḥan ʿaẓīman
اﻟﯿﺲ اﻧﺖ ﻏﻼم (14 ʾa lays anta ġulām "Are you not a young man?” ġulām instead of ġulāman
42 Regarding the word masā and others with etymological āʾ, one would not necessarily expect to see a difference in writing between masāʾan and masāʾ or masā. Absence of case here then can only be surmised from the lack of tanwīn alif on the noun ṣabāḥ. 43 The alif here is an alif al-wiqāyah “protecting alif,” which in standard CA orthography stands only after the plural morpheme ū on verbs. There was a great deal of variation regarding its representation in pre- and early Islamic texts and papyri (Déroche 2014; Van Putten and Stokes forthcoming), and it seems that this scribe followed a school wherein the alif al-wiqāyah followed every final ū, spelled
In Judaeo-Arabic texts, too, the absence of nominal case marking is common across time and space. According to the prevailing periodization of JA texts, I will present examples from Early JA followed by Classical JA. Late JA texts were almost totally non-literary, and thus only attest the absence of CA case system44 (Khan 2007).
4.2.1.1 Early Judaeo-Arabic (Blau and Hopkins 1987: §II) Early Judeo-Arabic texts are those texts written in the Hebrew script and predating the Classical Judaeo-Arabic period (see section 4.2.1.2), dating from the 8th and 9th centuries CE, conspicuously differ from CA orthographic practices, a fact that distinguishes them from the bulk of the material written during the period of Classical
Judaeo-Arabic (Blau and Hopkins 1984). Importantly for our purposes, the authors often
מן עינדי = ﻣﻦ ِﻋﻨﺪي :used matres lectionis to indicate short vowels, especially short i and u
sulaymān/ “Solomon.” The near complete absence/ סוליימן = ﺳﻠﯿﻤﺎن ;”min ʿindī/ “from me/ of matres lectionis indicating final case vowels argues strongly for their absence in the varieties behind these texts. The fact that tanwīn is not represented in these texts confirms this interpretation. Given that the orthography strays so far from CA orthography, there is no reason to suspect the authors would rigidly follow CA practice of not representing
44 Again here I do not include the so-called ‘dialectal tanwīn,’ which is widely attested in late JA texts, but which has a different distribution. On that phenomenon, see chapter 5 below. 112 tanwīn. There is no indication of short final high vowels, and as the following examples show, the accusative singular is never indicated marking a direct object, etc.:
(Vienna H34, apud Blau and Hopkins 1987: 98) לו לם תשתרו דיבג (16 ﻟﻮﻟﻢ ﺗﺸﺘﺮو دﯾﺒﺢ Law lam taštarū dībāg “Had you not purchased a brocade”
(Vienna Pap. 8916, apud ibid., 113) כירא סורגיה קבד דינר (17 ﻛﯿﺮا ﺳﻮرﺟﯿﺔ ﻗﺒﻆ دﯾﻨﺮ Kīra sūrgiyyah qabaḍ dīnār “Sergius received a dinar”
A few instances of frozen accusative marking adverbs occur in the corpus treated by Blau and Hopkins:
(Blau and Hopkins 1987: 149) וידא (18 وﯾﺪا waydā “And also”
(ibid.) וגדא (19 وﻏﺪا wa-ġadā “And tomorrow”
4.2.1.2 Classical Judaeo-Arabic Texts and Letters These examples are taken from texts dating to between the 10th and 15th centuries, the so-called classical period of JA (Khan 2007: 527). As we saw with the early Judaeo-
113 Arabic texts, it seems common for texts written during the classical period to lack any morpho-syntactic case marking.
20) (Abū ʿalī al-ḥasan, apud Blau 1980: 75) ויזיל אעראץ وﯾﺰﯾﻞ اﻋﺮاض wa-yuzīl ʾaʿrāḍ “And he relieved symptoms”
(21) (Judah ben Quraysh, apud ibid., 89) וכאן ישמעאל וקדָר מֻסתערב وﻛﺎن اﺳﻤﺎﻋﯿﻞ وﻗﺪر ﻣﺴﺘﻌﺮب wa-kān ʾismāʿīl wa-qadar mustaʿrib “And Ishmael and Qedar were Arabized”
(22) (Rabbi David ben Avraham, apud ibid. 246) פאל צדקה רנפע נפע עטים ﻓﺎﻟﺼﺪﻗﺔ ﺗﻨﻔﻊ ﻧﻔﻊ ﻋﻈﯿﻢ fal-ṣadaqah tanfaʿ nafʿ ʿaẓīm “But charity does a great service 5.2.1.3 Late Judaeo-Arabic Texts
As was reported above, the 15th century saw a marked decline in the number and quality of texts written in Judaeo-Arabic. Most of the published material comes from
Egypt and the Maghreb in the form of private letters and documents. A comprehensive treatment of the grammar and style of these letters may be found in Wagner (2010). Hary
(2009) provides a lengthy treatment of a translation of a religious text, which though differing from the private letters in some interesting ways, is virtually identical for our purposes. Tanwīn is not indicated outside of the morpheme an/in (on which, see chapter 5 below).
23) (T-S 8.12/7f - 11C Egypt, apud Wagner 2010: 94)
114 סרה פיהא מאיה ועשרין דינר ﺳﺮه ﻓﯿﮭﺎ ﻣﺎﯾﺔ وﻋﺸﺮﯾﻦ دﯾﻨﺮ surrah fī-hā miya wa-ʿišrīn dīnār "A purse worth 120 dinars” Dīnār instead of dīnāran
24) (T-S NS J332/4, apud Wagner 2010: 108) אכתי ארסלת לי כתאב اﺧﺘﻲ ارﺳﻠﺖ ﻟﻲ ﻛﺘﺎب ʾuẖtī ʾarsalat lī kitāb "My sister sent me a letter” kitāb instead of kitāban
25) (T-S 10J30.4/21, apud Wagner 2010: 109) פאללה לא יכן עלי ראצי ﻓﺎ ﻻ ﯾﻜﻦ ﻋﻠﻲ راﺿﻲ fallāh lā yakun ʿalayya rāḍī “By God it would not be pleasant for me” rāḍī instead of rāḍiyan
26) (T-S 12.301/9, apud ibid.) פאללה יגעלה צחיח ﻓﺎ ﯾﺠﻌﻠﮫ ﺻﺤﯿﺢ fallāh yaǧʿal-uh ṣaḥīḥ “May God make it right” Ṣaḥīḥ instead of ṣaḥīḥan
27) (15th century Egyptian Hary 2009: 261) לם נקדר נתכלם אליך רצי אוו טייב ﻟﻢ ﻧﻘﺪر ﻧﺘﻜﻠﻢ إﻟﯿﻚ رﺿﻲ أو طﯿﺐ lam naqdar natakallam ʾilayk raḍī ʾaw ṭayyib “We will not be able to speak to you good or bad” raḍī and ṭayyib instead of raḍiyan and ṭayyiban
4.2.2 CA Case
The case system as attested in CA, and as reconstructed for PA (see above, chapter 1), is attested occasionally in ChA MA texts, but almost never in JA (with one
115 exception, see below). Due to the nature of the Arabic script, which was used to write most ChA texts, the accusative is the only overtly marked case on singular nouns, except of course for nouns such as ʾab and ʾaẖ, where all three cases are marked by a long vowel in construct. Since MA is defined by its non-CA features, in particular case marking, it is rare to find entire texts that adhere to CA case marking norms.45 In many texts where CA case marking is attested, authors represented case inconsistently (JA: 91ff.). Indeed, many examples of caseless MA given above were taken from texts in which the author at other places indicated case (generally) according to CA norms (examples from Blau ASP
§221.1.1, 2):
28) (Levin Mt 2,7) ﺳﺮا sirran "secretly”
29) (Levin Mt 1,19) ﺧﻔﯿﺎ ẖafiyyan “secretly”
30) (Levin Mt 2, 14) ﻟﯿﻼ laylan “nightly”
31) (S 72 Mt 2,10)
45 Indeed, as my colleague Marijn van Putten points out to me, there are undoubtedly texts that do not adhere to CA norms as prescribed by the grammarians, but which have nevertheless been treated as examples of CA because case marking, where overt, follows expected CA patterns. Future work on these corpora is needed to determine whether CA case patterns correlate with other features and patterns of standardized CA. 116 ﻓﺮﺣﻮا ﻓﺮﺣﺎ ﻋﻈﯿﻤﺎ faraḥū faraḥan ʿaẓīman They rejoiced with great joy (ﻓﺮﺣﻮا ﻓﺮح ﻋﻈﯿﻢ :cf. Levin Mt 2,10, example 13 above)
32) (BM 4950 62b/63 = Ps 69,9) ﺻﺮت ﻏﺮﯾﺒﺎ ﻻﺧﻮﺗﻲ وﻏﺮﯾﺐ ﻟﺒﻨﻲ اﻣﻲ ṣirt(u) ġarīban li-iẖwatī wa-ġarīb li-banī ʾummī “I have become a stranger unto my brethren, an alien unto my mother’s children”
33) (BM 4950 143, 9f) وﻟﻢ ﯾﺰﯾﺪھﻢ ذﻟﻚ اﻻ ﺷﺮا وﻛﻔﺮ ﺑﺎ wa-lam yazīdhum ḏālik ʾillā šarran wa-kufr billāh "And that did not add them but wickedness and disbelief in God”
34) (BM 4950 67, -4 = Jer 31,32) واﻛﻮن ﻟﮭﻢ اﻟﮫ وھﻢ ﯾﻜﻮﻧﻮا ﻟﻲ ﺷﻌﺒﺎ wa-ʾakūn lahum ʾilāh46 wa-hum yakūnū lī šaʿban “And I shall be their God and they will be my people” Additionally, examples already in JA of correct case marking of singular nouns with case marked by long vowels, as in the so-called ‘five nouns’ (Arabic ʾasmāʾ al-ẖamsah), suggest a more complicated development than Blau et al typically reconstruct (taken from
Blau and Hopkins 2007):
(P. Mich. Inv. 6710 Recto) ל אבי יעקוב ﻷﺑﻲ ﯾﻌﻘﻮب liʾabī yaʿqūb “to Abū Yaʿqūb”
(P. Mich Inv. 6710 Verso) ליבי עלי אבקה אל
46 Ahmad Al-Jallad (p.c.) has pointed out that the hāʾ here could have been equated with the tāʾ al- marbūṭa, where the accusative singular is not normally written, and thus left off. It is of course impossible to know whether that is the case or not, but it does suggest caution in categorizing this particular example. 117 ﻟﯿﺒﻲ ﻋﻠﻲ أﺑﻘﮫ أل lībī (or liyabī)ʿalī ʾabqā-h ʾel “To Abū ʿAlī, may God preserve him”
(P. Berol. 10599 Verso) ליבי יעקוב אבדק אלה מן אכיה ﻟﯿﺒﻲ ﯾﻌﻘﻮب اﺑﻘﮫ ﷲ ﻣﻦ اﺧﯿﮫ lībī yaʿqūb ʾabqā-h allāh, min ʾaẖī-h “To Abū Yaʿqūb, may God preserve him, from his brother”
One example of etymological nominative after a preposition occurs in their corpus:
וקרו אבו עתמן وﻗﺮو اﺑﻮ ﻋﺜﻤﻦ wa-qrū abū ʿuṯmān “And give (pl) Abū ʿUṯmān [greetings]”
Hopkins (1984: §162) holds up examples such as the last one as evidence for an early date of case loss. His presentation, however, is misleading. Hopkins focuses on non-CA declension of these nouns, without providing statistical information regarding the ratio of
CA to non-CA occurrences. A perusal of the inscriptions from the first Islamic century
(7th - 8th centuries AD) from al-Kilābī (2009) reveals that, out of twenty instances with names composed of ʾab, “father,” nominative occurred after a preposition only three times out of 20 occurrences, and the expected genitive occurred 17. Thus we are in need of a comprehensive survey that examines the distribution of features in the papyri and epigraphic record without imposing the traditional MA framework on the data. Such a thorough examination is thus needed to nuance the discussion of these nouns.
Nevertheless, it seems reasonable based on these data to suggest that in many cases authors were able to correctly inflect these nouns, while those examples without expected
118 inflection could plausibly be interpreted as varieties in which a particular case has been frozen. Given that most of the examples of which I am aware are with the wordsʾab
“father,” in personal names, and the determinative ḏū, often in names of months (cf. ḏū al-qaʿdah), it would not be surprising for this development to take place. So in cases such
in (the month of) Ḏū al-Qaʿda,” it“ ﻓﻲ ذو اﻟﻘﻌﺪة (as P. Berol. 8177 (Hopkins 1984: 160 seems probable that in these instances, Ḏū al-Qaʿdah was understood as an uninflected month name.47
The CA case system is absent in the vast majority of JA texts and, following Blau
(JA: 8), this is generally interpreted as the JA authors’ inability to write CA competently.
The accusative is attested, but its distribution in JA is often quite different from the accusative in CA. Recent work on the material from the Cairo Genizah has brought to light texts which reveal a great deal of familiarity with CA on the part of at least some
Jewish authors. The following examples are taken from a JA adaptation of Ibn Ġinnī’s al- lumaʿ fī al-luġa al-ʿarabiyyah:
באבُ מא יתבע אלאסםَ פי אעראבِ ِה והו כמסהُ אצרבٍ וצףٌ ותאכידٌ ובדלُُ ועטףُ ביאןٍ ועטףُ בחרףٍ (35 ﺑﺎب ﻣﺎ ﯾﺘﺒﻊ اﻻﺳﻢ ﻓﻲ اﻋﺮاﺑﮫ وھﻮ ﺧﻤﺴﺔ اﺿﺮب وﺻﻒ وﺗﺄﻛﯿﺪ وﺑﺪل وﻋﻄﻒ ﺑﯿﺎن وﻋﻄﻒ ﺑﺤﺮف "The chapter on that which follows the noun with the same case-ending, of which there are five types: attribute, emphasis, apposition, clarifying conjunction, and conjunction by means of a particle”
47 There was clearly variation among those who produced the early Islamic inscriptions and papyri, where both correctly inflected and frozen forms are found. A search of the Arabic Papyri Database (APD) of documents produced in Egypt from the first two Islamic centuries (7th and 8th centuries CE) revealed only one un-inflected case of ḏū al-qaʿdah where would would expect genitive ḏī al-qaʿdah (P.Fahmi Taaqud 1 .32). 119 According to standard definitions of JA, and indeed MA, however, this text is not a JA text because it contains CA features, does not deal with specifically Jewish concerns, and is not overtly intended for a Jewish readership (cf. Khan 2007). Other
Jewish writers, most prominently Maimonides and Saadya Gaon, wrote some works in standard CA, and others in typical MA style. If these authors were capable of writing in
CA, then their MA works obviously do not demonstrate lack of ability in CA. This much is occasionally acknowledged (cf. Khan 2007:529). Normally, this is taken to indicate that they are writing for an audience that is less educated, unable to comprehend CA, but able to understand MA. While that might be the case, this suggests that there were multiple literary language targets. In other words, it is not necessarily the case that these features only existed in CA and were absent in the spoken dialects, from as early as the early Islamic period (7-8th centuries AD). We do not need to assume, as do Hary et al, that the trends that dominate the contemporary spoken dialects represent the only pattern since the beginning of the Islamic period. The material from the pre-Islamic period, as well as the QCT itself, shows that these conceptualizations need to be completely rethought.48
48 For example, case marking is not solely present or absent; rather, partial case is present in the pre-Islamic Levant and in the QCT. Further, the negator lam is present in the Safaitic corpus, in a Haramic inscription on the Yemeni frontier (Haram 40: lm yġtsl “he did not wash himself”; I thank Ahmad Al-Jallad for this reference), as well as the QCT, none of which is CA. Given that early Arabic had several negators, e.g., mā, lam, lan and lā, it is completely plausible that while mā was generalized to most contexts in many dialects, or possibly borrowed in some cases, and indeed has become the majority in today’s dialects, the same thing happened in some dialects with lam, and thus its presence in early texts need not be a classicization. 120 4.2.3 Non-Classical Case Marking Case marking, usually in the form of the indefinite accusative, is well attested across the MA corpora. As we have seen, case marking is occasionally identical to the norms found in CA. Very frequently, however, case marking, specifically the accusative case, occurs contrary to the CA norm. In line with the diverse nature of MA in general, and even in ChA and JA corpora in particular, there is no single explanation that accounts for the various patterns of case distribution in these texts. This has not stopped scholars, most notably Blau and Hopkins, from proposing one: hypercorrections and hypocorrections. As I have noted already, this explanation assumes that the same dichotomy that exists in the contemporary period, that of colloquial Arabic on the one hand and CA on the other, has always existed. More specifically, they have assumed that all genres of literature would have, at least originally, been attempted in CA. I have pointed out already that virtually all examples of literature from the pre-Islamic period, as well as the Qurʾān itself, would be in danger of being classified as examples of MA literature in this perspective.
In what follows, I will review the non-CA case distributions attested. First, I will briefly review Yemeni Judaeo-Arabic texts, treated mainly in Blau (1988), which attest a reflex of nominative un in many of the same contexts as attested in modern dialects, with a few differences (on which, see below chapter 5 section 4). I will then review the accusative, marked by final alif, in ChA and non-Yemeni JA texts. We will see that it functions across JA and ChA to mark very specific, non-CA, syntactic functions. I will argue that it is unlikely that these represent hypercorrections. Instead, I will argue that
121 these functions represent a set of natural developments. Specifically, I will argue that these developments represent a shift away from a strict accusative alignment to one in which, broadly speaking, complements are explicitly marked. The reasons and possible sources for these changes will be discussed, with precursors, and possibly nascent trends, attested in both CA and other Semitic languages highlighted.
4.2.3.1 Yemeni JA In a short note on relics of tanwīn in Yemeni JA (henceforth YJA), Blau (1988:
285-7) notes that in JA texts from the 17th century the morpheme un (or ū), corresponding to the indefinite nominative in CA, is used almost exclusively, instead of an/in. He notes several contexts in which un occurs:
a. adverbial: qad abaʿtu ilayhi jumlat ḥiṣṣatī...bayʿan...thābitan akīdan...bittun (= CA battan49) batlan nāfidhan qaṭʿiyyan “I have sold him by whole share...a fit, well established...final, irrevocable, effective and decisive...sale” (ibid., 285) b. modified noun: ẖulūqun keṯīra “many people’ (ibid., 286) c. in rhyme (poetry): we-’ant al-mustexārū...we-niʿmathū teẖuṣṣ ḏū aliṣṭibārū “and you have the choice….and His grace is only for the preserving” (ibid.)
As Blau notes (ibid., 285, 7), this feature is present in a number of contemporary NW
Tihama dialects, and its presence in YJA dialects is indicative of its presence in pre-
49 The point of this example seems to be that Yemeni un occurs where otherwise the author uses CA an. If this does represent an intrusion of the spoken situation into an otherwise CA text, it could bolster the argument, outlined below in chapter 5, that the Yemeni dialect forms result from the merger of case vowels, and consequently a historical merging (or syncretism) of case in these varieties. 122 modern times. More recently, Blau (2006a) has suggested a possible connection between this phenomenon and the Nabataean wawation (on which, see chapter 2 above). Given that the distribution of this feature is similar to its modern Yemeni distribution, I will comment more on Yemeni un/ū and its diachronic implications in the next chapter. For now, it suffices to point out that the YJA seems to reflect a living reality, though one which might have differed slightly from spoken usage by this late period. There is no reason to assume a priori any direct CA influence50; rather, YJA illustrates what is suggested in other places throughout this chapter, namely that MA texts very likely reflect an interaction with living language varieties, and that their features can be understood against that backdrop, rather than primarily as colloquial influence bubbling to the surface in a failed attempt to write CA.
4.2.3.2 Accusative Singular (Tanwīn Alif) in MA: A Functional Analysis Blau (JA 174 ff.), followed by Hopkins (1984 §160-172), categorize the various non-CA functions of the accusative, marked by the tanwīn alif, based on the various realizations expected in CA grammar.51 For example, though Blau provides examples
50 The issue of CA influence is challenging, especially in the pre-modern period. There may indeed be a more complex interaction. One claim made throughout this dissertation is that there were a number of different varieties that can be broadly designated artistic/performance. We have direct evidence of linguistic diversity, and speakers and users of these various registers were almost certainly in contact to one degree or another. Any arguments for influence of one register on another should therefore be framed within a framework of language contact. We are in need of more theoretical work done on language contact between spoken and artistic registers, and between artistic registers. The predominant framework within which all MA has been analyzed heretofore assumed that CA was the target, and only after enough failures to produce it was there a standardization of non-CA features as a part of MA registers. I am arguing from a completely different framework. 51 This is in fact one of the great problems of Blau’s (and likewise Hopkins’) methodology. He assumes a particular narrative of the development of Arabic (on which, see below), and interprets anything not CA as arising as a result of the dialect. However, at the same time, he assumes that anything that was genuinely dialectal can be found in a modern dialect. Thus ultimately, anything that is not either CA or modern 123 that clearly attest existentials marked accusative in various types of clauses, he nevertheless neglects to make this connection and instead categorizes based on CA categories (see examples below). Further, he often fails to note that the predication in different of his categories is the same. I argue that the vast majority of examples that Blau
(JA and ASP) and Hopkins (1984) cite can be classified as marking one of three functions: Predicates of Nominal Sentences, Existential Predication, Subjects of (usually passive) Verbs.52 Several other marginal functions of the accusative will also be discussed.
4.2.3.2.1 Predicates of Nominal Sentences The accusative is frequently used to mark the predicates of nominal sentences in both JA and ChA. In addition to marking the predicates of bare nominal sentences, the accusative also functions to mark predicates of nominal sentences after the particles ʾinna and ʾanna
(examples from Hopkins 1984: §170; Blau JA 181-2, 205; ASP §224.1.1.1):
36) (Ibn Wahb 45, 10/11) ﻣﺎ ھﻮ ﻟﻲ ﺧﻄﺎ وﻋﻠﯿﻚ ﺣﻘﺎ mā huwa lī ẖatā53 wa ʿalayk ḥaqqan "What was an error on my part and a duty on yours”
37) (DAB 34,5) وھﻮ ﻟﻚ...ﺷﺎﻛﺮا وﻟﺘﻔﻀﻠﻚ ذاﻛﺮا wa-huwa lak...šākiran wa-li-tafaḍḍulak ḏākiran dialectal Arabic is attributed to hypercorrection. We will see that this is unnecessary for the analysis of tanwīn alif in the rest of this chapter, and especially the problematic interpretations of the morpheme in/an in the next. This leads to a deterministic method, in which only what is already known can be considered ‘living’ or ‘real’ in any sense. 52 This does not include marking direct objects in the texts Blau et al treat. 53 Here again, it is possible that actual realization here was accusative ẖaṭaʾan, or even ẖaṭan if glottal stop had been lost in this variety. Because of the orthographic ambiguity created by the Arabic script, we cannot be sure whether accusative or non-accusative was intended here. 124 "And he is grateful to you...and mindful of your favor”
38) (DAB 32, 15) ﻓﺮاﯾﻚ ﻓﻲ ذاﻟﻚ ﻣﺜﺒﺘﺎ fa-rāyak fī ḏālik muṯbitan “And your opinion concerning that will be irreversible”
39) (Saadia Gaon - Goldziher Memorial 29. 6-7) הל דלך גאיזא אם לא ھﻞ ذﻟﻚ ﺟﺎﯾﺰا أم ﻻ hal ḏālik jāyizan ʾam lā? “is that allowed or not?”
40) (Zucker pp. 310ff, Genesis xliv. 16) וקול אלכתאב משתקא מן קולהם وﻗﻮل اﻟﻜﺘﺎب ﻣﺸﺘﻘﺎ ﻣﻦ ﻗﻮﻟﮭﻢ wa-qawl al-kitāb muštaqqan min qawl-hum "The words of this book are derived from their words”
41) (Ibn Shahin 177.6) אנתם קומא עלמא اﻧﺘﻢ ﻗﻮﻣﺎ ﻋﻠﻤﺎ antum qawman ʿilman "You are an educated people”
42) (JQR N.S. 388.14) ודלך משירא אלי אלבכורים وذﻟﻚ ﻣﺸﯿﺮا إﻟﻰ اﻟﺒﻜﻮرﯾﻢ wa-ḏālik mušīran ʾilā al-baẖōrīm "And that indicates the first fruits”
43) (Harkavy, 239.15) ודלך דאכלא פי טי קולה وذﻟﻚ داﺧﻼ ﻓﻲ طﻲ ﻗﻮﻟﮫ wa-ḏālik dāẖilan fī ṭī qawluh "And that is part of what he said”
44) (RMBM 57.10) 125 הל הדא אלתאויל צחיחא ھﻞ ھﺬا اﻟﺘﺄوﯾﻞ ﺻﺤﯿﺤﺎ hal hāḏā al-taʾwīl ṣaāḥīḥan "Is this interpretation correct?”
45) (RMBM 248.8) פאמכאן דלך קריבא ﻓﺎﻣﻜﺎن ذﻟﻚ ﻗﺮﯾﺒﺎ fa-imkān ḏālik qarīban "This possibility is not remote”
46) (Gaonica, p. 146. A I) ומן ראי אן דלכ גא׳זא לאגל אנה wa-man raʾā ʾan(na) ḏālik ǧʾayizan liʾajal ʾanna-hū "and he who thinks that this is allowed because”
47) (Wise 26.21) פאן אלהוא עדוא ללקלב fa-ʾan(na) al-hawā ʿaduwwan lil-qalb "As passion is an enemy of the heart”
48) (JQR N.S., 378.4) לאן מדהבה הו פוק מדהבהם ומזידא עלי תכפיפהם li-ʾan(na) maḏhab-uh fawq maḏhab-hum wa-mazīdan ʿalā taẖfif-hum “As his opinion went further than their opinion and was more lenient than theirs”
49) (Arendzen, 13.5) واﻣﺮ ھﺬا ﻧﺎﻓﺬا ﻋﻠﻰ ﻛﻞ ﻧﺼﺮاﻧﻲ wa-amr hāḏā nāfiḏan ʿalā kull naṣrānī “the order of this man is binding on every Christian”
50) (MS British Museum 31.20) واﻟﻌﻤﺎ ﻣﺴﺘﺤﻜﻤﺎ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻗﻠﺒﮫ wa-al-ʿumā mustaḥkiman ʿalā qalb-u "And blindness takes root in his heart”
51) (1 John ii. 17) واﻟﻌﺎﻟﻢ ھﻮ ﻣﺎﺿﯿﺎ 126 wa-al-ʿālam huwa māḍiyan "And the world passes away”
52) (1 John iii.4) ھﻮ اﯾﻀﺎ ﺻﺎﻧﻌﺎ huwa ʾaydan ṣāniʿan "He also does”
53) (2 Corinthians viii. 10) وھﺬا ﻟﻜﻢ ﻧﺎﻓﻌﺎ wa-hāḏā lakum nāfiʿan “And this is expedient to you”
54) (BM 4950 27, 6-7) واﻟﺸﺎھﺪ ﻋﻠﻰ ان ﷲ اﻻھﺎ واﺣﺪا وﻟﺤﻤﺎ واﺣﺪا wa-al-šāhid ʿalā ʾan(na) ʾallāh ʾilāhan wāḥidan wa-laḥman wāḥidan "And the proof that God...is one God and one flesh”
55) (SS 11 VII 1) ﻻﻧﮫ ﻣﺎﻛﺮا li-ʾanna-hu mākiran "Because he is deceitful”
56) (1 John 3.3) ﻛﻤﺎ ان ذﻟﻚ طﺎھﺮا kamā ʾan(na) ḏālik ṭāhiran “As he is pure”
4.2.3.2.2 Subjects of Existential Predication Another well-attested function of the accusative in both JA and ChA texts is to mark existential predication (examples from Blau JA: 183-4, 207):
57) (Siddur 120.7, 318. 14) קומא יזידון ﻗﻮﻣﺎ ﯾﺰﯾﺪون qawman yazīdūn “There is a people who add…”
127
58) (Siddur 136. 19) מאידה עליהא פטירא ﻣﺎﯾﺪة ﻋﻠﯿﮭﺎ ﻓﻄﯿﺮا māydah ʿalayhā faṭīran "A table on which there is unleavened bread”
59) (RMBM 164.16) ופי אלכתובה אלמדכורה שרטא הדה נצה وﻓﻲ اﻟﻜﺘﻮﺑﺔ اﻟﻤﺬﻛﻮرة ﺷﺮطﺎ ھﺬا ﻧﺼﮫ wa-fī al-kutubba al-maḏkūrah šarṭan hādā nuṣṣ-uh "And there is in the aforementioned marriage contract a condition worded as follows”
60) (RMBM 135.1) פיהא אכתלאפא כתירא ﻓﯿﮭﺎ اﺧﺘﻼﻓﺎ ﻛﺜﯿﺮا fīhā iẖtilāfan kaṯīran “There are great differences in them”
61) (High Ways 94.15) לא בהימה ِِ ירכבהא ולא רפיק ََ יונסה ולא סיף ََ ידפע בה ﻻ ﺑﮭﯿﻤﺔ ﯾﺮﻛﺒﮭﺎ وﻻ رﻓﯿﻘﺎ ﯾﻮﻧﺴﮫ وﻻ ﺳﯿﻔﺎ ﯾﺪﻓﻊ ﺑﮫ lā bahīmatin yarkubhā wa-lā rafīqan yawansuh wa-lā sayfan yadfaʿ bih "There is no animal to ride on, no intimate friend, and no sword to defend himself with”
62) (Studia Sinaitica ii, 2 Corinthians ii. 16) ﻟﻤﻨﮭﻢ ﺷﻤﺎ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻤﻮت اﻟﻰ اﻟﻤﻮت وﻻﺧﺮﯾﻦ ﺷﻤﺎ ﻣﻦ ﺣﯿﺎة اﻟﻰ ﺣﯿﺎة li-minhum šamman min al-mawt ʾilā al-mawt wa-li-ʾāẖarīn šamman min ḥayāh ʾilā ḥayāh "To some of them there exists a smell of death unto death, and to others a smell of life unto life”
63) (Studia Sinaitica vii, 92.15) وﻣﻌﮭﻢ ھﺪاﯾﺎ ذھﺒﺎ وﻟﺒﺎﻧﺎ وﻣﺮا wa-maʿahum hadāyā ḏahaban wa-libānan wa-murran “They had gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh”
64) (Khoury 150, 24, apud Hopkins 1984: 170) 128 ﻗﺎل ﻓﮭﻞ ﺑﮭﺎ ﻟﺒﻨﺎ qāl fa-hal bihā labanan “He said ‘is there any milk in it?’”
Blau and Hopkins both list in a separate section those examples where the subject of kāna or one of its ‘sisters’ (ṣāra, laysa etc.), as well as other verbs with similar semantics, which express existence, occurs in the accusative. In CA, the case marking triggered by the presence of this category of verbs is the same, namely the subject is in the nominative and the predicate, when expressed, is in the accusative. In MA, however, the subject is in the accusative. Since the nature of the predication in these examples is the same, and the case marking is identical in MA, I see no reason to consider them separately (examples from Blau JA: 185):
65) (Ibn Shahin 100.10) כאן רגלא פקיר kān raǧulan faqīr "There was a poor man”
66) (BIFAO xxx, 35, 11) وان ﻟﯿﺲ ﻗﺒﻠﻜﻢ اﻻ ﺧﯿﺮا wa-ʾin lays qablakum ʾillā ẖayran "And if you have only good” (lit. “and if there is not in front of you except good”)54
67) (Wahb 12, 9) اذا ﻟﻢ ﯾﻜﻦ دوﻧﮫ أﺑﺎ ʾiḏā lam yakun dūna-hu ʾabā "If there is no other father besides him”
68) (Jephet, Ruth, 1.1) חדת גועא
54 On this example, see also subsection v. on the use of the accusative after the particle ʾillā. I include it here because of the basic structure of the sentence. It is impossible to know whether the accusative is due to the use of ẖayr as nominal predicate, the presence of ʾillā, or perhaps likely both. 129 ḥadaṯ ǧawʿan “A famine occurred” or simply “there was a famine”
Most of the examples that Hopkins and Blau classify as belonging simply to a category wherein the predicate of kān (or less commonly, one of its ‘sisters’, see above) occur wherein the predicate is prepositional phrase, often indicating possession. Blau (JA: 184-
5) and Hopkins (1984: §170) categorize these examples separately based on the verb which occurs (i.e., sentences with kān separately from those with lays). As Bar-Asher
(2009: ch. 5) has convincingly shown, however, predication in possessive constructions in the Semitic languages is, with the exception of Akkadian, the same as in existential sentences. They pattern together in triggering accusative thus I include the following examples together under existential predication (examples from Blau JA: 185, 207)
69) (Siddur 64.7) וליס פיה צררא وﻟﯿﺲ ﻓﯿﮫ ﺿﺮرا "And there is no harm in it”
70) (Ibn Shahin, 71.4) מוצע לא יכון פיה עאלמא בל ﻣﻮﺿﻊ ﻻ ﯾﻜﻮن ﻓﯿﮫ ﻋﺎﻟﻤﺎ ﺑﻞ “In a place where there is no learned man, but…”
71) (NPAF I, 20-22, apud Hopkins 1984: 170) واﻧﺎ ارﺟﻮ ان ﺗﻜﻮن ﻋﻨﺪك اﻣﺎﻧﺔ واﺟﺮا وﺗﻨﻔﯿﺬا ﻟﻠﻌﻤﻞ fa-ʾarjū ʾan takūn ʿandak ʾamānah wa-ʾujran wa-tanfīḏan lil-ʿamal "And I hope that you will show trustworthiness, action and efficiency in your office” (lit. “and I hope that there will be at you trustworthiness, action and efficiency for the work”)
72) (128 .19, Samuel ben Ḥofni) מנהא אן לא יכון להם וכילא ולא וציא ﻣﻨﮭﺎ أن ﻻ ﯾﻜﻮن ﻟﮭﻢ وﻛﯿﻼ وﻻ وﺻﯿﺎ 130 min-hā ʾan lā yakūn la-hum wakīlan wa-lā waṣiyyan “One of them is that they shall not have either a representative or a trustee”
73) (Ibn Shahin 83.4) וכאן לי ולדא וחידא وﻛﺎن ﻟﻲ وﻟﺪا وﺣﯿﺪا wa-kān lī waladan waḥīdan "And I had an only son”
74) (Ibn Shahin 87.5) כאן לה ולדא וחידא ﻛﺎن ﻟﮫ وﻟﺪا وﺣﯿﺪا kān la-hu waladan waḥīdan "He had an only son”
75) (Harkavy, 249.10 f,b) ראו׳ כאן לה מאלא קבל שמ׳ راو' ﻛﺎن ﻟﮫ ﻣﺎﻻ ﻗﺒﻞ ﺷﻢ' Reuben kān la-hu mālan qibal šimʿōn "Simeon owed Reuben some money” (lit. “Reuben, there was to him money on Simeon’s part”)
76) (RMBM 14.9) והל יכון ללימין ...תאתירא אם לא وھﻞ ﯾﻜﻮن ﻟﻠﯿﻤﯿﻦ...ﺗﺄﺛﯿﺮا أم ﻻ wa-hal yakūn lil-yamīn ...taʾṯīran ʾam lā "And will the oath...have any influence or not?” (lit. “and will there be to the oath...influence or not?”)
77) (Siddur 8.8, apud Blau 1981: 182). צאר פיה חטאً לדאוד ﺻﺎر ﻓﯿﮫ ﺣﻈﺎ ﻟﺪاود ṣār fīh ḥaẓẓan li-dāwūd "David got a part of it” (lit. “There happened in it a part to David”)
78) (British Museum MS 4950, 85b, 8 f.b) رﺟﻞ ﻛﺎن ﻟﮫ ﻛﺮﻣﺎ raǧul kān la-hu karaman 131 "A man had a vineyard”
79) (BM MS 4950, 101b.9) اذا ﻛﺎن ﻻﺣﺪھﻤﺎ ﺣﺒﯿﺒﺎ ʾiḏā kān li-ʾaḥad-humā ḥabīban "If one of them has a friend”
80) (Studia Semitica vii, Acts xi. 28) وﯾﻜﻮن ﻟﺴﺮة اﺑﻨﺎ wa-yakūn li-Sarah ibnan "And Sarah shall have a son”
81) (Levin, Mark ix. 50) ﯾﻜﻮن ﻟﻜﻢ ﻣﻠﺤﺎ...وﯾﻜﻮن ﻟﻜﻢ ﺻﻠﺤﺎ yakūn la-kum milḥan...wa-yakūn la-kum ṣulḥan "Have salt...and have peace”
82) (MS 8605, Acts xv. 3) ﺻﺎر ﻓﺮﺣﺎ ﻋﻈﯿﻤﺎ ﻟﻜﻞ اﻻﺧﻮة ṣār farḥan ʿaẓīman li-kull al-ʾiẖwa “And there was a great joy unto all the brethren”
As marking indefinite existentials with the accusative is not attested in CA, it is not clear on what basis this can be considered a hypercorrection. Presumably, one could argue that some of the above examples were due to mis-parsing the constituents of a clause, especially in the case of kāna. Such a misanalysis could then have led to marking what should have been the subject (Arabic ism kāna) as the predicate (ẖabar kāna). However, the consistency with which the topic of the existential clause is marked suggests at the very least that this was an established function of the accusative (or perhaps, the tanwīn alif; see below). We must then assume that CA was the target, and that the hypercorrection that led to this distribution was complete by the time the texts in which
132 the cited examples above were written. While this assumption might seem safe given the dominant narrative of Arabic language history heretofore dominant in scholarship, there is no positive evidence that CA was the target.
4.2.3.2.3. Subjects of Passive Verbs In Arabic (and the Semitic languages in general; see below), passivization of transitive verbs results in the patient of the verb being marked as a subject (cf. Comrie
1989). In CA, passivization is accomplished primarily by means of ablaut: a - a > u - i.
The patient, promoted to subject of the verb, is marked in the nominative case. In MA, however, the subject of the passive verb is occasionally marked accusative. Most of the attested examples involve 3ms verbs, but one example with a plural non-animate noun licenses 3fs agreement (examples from Blau JA: 185, 209):
83) (Siddur 12.30) תקרא פצולא ﺗُﻘﺮأ ﻓﺼﻮﻻ tuqraʾ fuṣūlan “Chapters were read”
84) (Siddur 361.15) לא יגוז אן יזאד עליהם כאמסא ﻻ ﯾﺠﻮز أن ﯾﺰاد ﻋﻠﯿﮭﻢ ﺧﺎﻣﺴﺎ lā yaǧūz ʾan yuzād ʿalayhum ẖāmisan "It is forbidden to add a fifth one to them”
85) (Ibn Shahin 166.2) קבל אן יולד לה ולדא ﻗﺒﻞ أن ﯾﻮﻟﺪ ﻟﮫ وﻟﺪا qabl ʾan yūlad la-hu waladan "Before a child has been born to him”
133
86) (RMBM 191.3) לא יחל אן יטלק עליה קולא ﻻ ﯾﺤﻞ أن ﯾﻄﻠﻖ ﻋﻠﯿﮫ ﻗﯿﻼ la yaḥill ʾan yuṭlaq ʿalayh qawlan "It is forbidden to say anything about it”
87) (JQR, N.S., 5, 1914-15, 357.20) מן אנכסר לה צרפא פי מסלך אלנאס ﻣﻦ اﻧﻜﺴﺮ ﻟﮫ ظﺮﻓﺎ ﻓﻲ ﻣﺴﻠﻚ اﻟﻨﺎس man inkasar la-hu ẓarfan fī maslak an-nās "He whose vessel is broken in the road where people pass”
88) (Studia Sinaitica vii, 92.17) اﻧﮫ ﻗﺪ ُوﻟﺪ ﻓﯿﻜﻢ ﻣﻠﻜﺎ ﻋﻈﯿﻢ55 ʾinnahu qad wulid fī-kum malikan ʿaẓīm "There is a great king born among you”
89) (Studia Sinaitica 101. 7-8) ﻓﻠﻢ ﯾُﺮى ﻟﮭﻢ اﺛﺮا fa-lam yurā la-hum ʾaṯaran "And no more trace appeared to them”
90) (Studia Sinaitica 102.21) وﻟﻢ ﯾُﺮى ﻓﻲ اﻟﺪﻧﯿﺎ اﻧﺴﺎن ﻣﻦ ادم اﻟﻰ ﯾﻮﻣﻨﺎ ھﺬا ﻧﺒﯿﺎ وﻻ ﻏﯿﺮه ﻣﻦ ﻏﯿﺮ ﺧﻄﯿﺔ wa-lam yurā fī al-dunyā insān min ādam ʾilā yawm-nā hāḏā nabiyyan wa-lā ġayr-uh min ġayr ẖaṭiyyah "And no man has been seen in our world today, a prophet, nor anyone else, without sin”
55 Note here that the noun is marked with tanwīn alif, but not the following attributive adjective. This is the pattern that characterizes the so-called ‘dialectal tanwīn’, which will be discussed in the next chapter. Blau (e.g., JA 210-12) attempts to explain the distribution in terms of pausal and non-pausal position, but, as he rightly notes, this is not particularly meaningful in the context of these corpora. The overlap between dialectal tanwīn, where pause is meaningful, and JA and ChA, where it is not, requires further study. Blau’s position seems to be most, if not all, of the non-CA case functions in MA can be considered living in some sense, but that the ones that are manifested, which are not found in modern bedouin dialects, are due to hypercorrection (see e.g., Blau JA 177-80 et passim). 134 Though he acknowledges the presence of similar case marking in the Semitic languages, including CA, Blau (ASP §225.1, pp. 336, n. 64) nevertheless claims that case endings had already been lost in the dialects of the authors of these texts and that, therefore “one is inclined to attribute the occurrence of tanwīn -an in this position to hyper-correction emanating from the tendency to use case-endings.” As chapters 2 and 3 have demonstrated, however, the pre-Islamic evidence, as well as the evidence of the QCT, reveals numerous dialects that had reduced case systems. The QCT itself shows the presence of at least one dialect or register that had lost final short high vowels, but otherwise possessed normal case inflection. Therefore there is no reason to assume that this could not be an internal development of a still-functioning case system.
4.2.3.2.4. Subjects of Active Verbs Without precedent in CA (though, as we shall see, not without precedent in
Semitic), the subjects of active verbs are occasionally marked with the accusative in MA, though this seems to be much more common in ChA than in JA. In JA, the examples
Blau provides include only intransitive verbs. In ChA, however, the agent of transitive verbs is often marked accusative as well (examples from Hopkins 1984: 170; Blau JA:
186, 209-10):
91) (APEL V 302, 5) ﻓﻠﻢ ﯾﺎﺗﯿﻨﺎ ﺧﺒﺮا fa-lam yaʾtī-nā ẖabaran "There came to me no news”
92) (Ibn Shahin, 31.4) אדא מאת לנא מיתא إذا ﻣﺎت ﻟﻨﺎ ﻣﯿﺘﺎ 135 ʾiḏā māt la-nā mayyitan "If one of us dies”
93) (Studia Sinaitica vii, Acts x.14) ﻣﺎ دﺧﻞ ﻓﻤﻲ دﻧﺴﺎ وﻻ طﻔﺴﺎ mā daẖal famī danasan wa-lā ṭafasan "Nothing defiled and unclean entered my mouth”
94) (Studia Sinaitica vii, x.30) اﺗﺎﻧﻲ رﺟﻼ ʾatā-nī rajulan "A man came to me”
95) (Studia Sinaitica vii, xxii. 6) ﺑﻐﺘﺔ ﻣﻦ اﻟﺴﻤﺎ ﺑﺮق ﻋﻠﯿﮫ ﻧﻮرا ﻛﺜﯿﺮا baġtatan min al-samā baraq ʿalay-h nūran kaṯīran "Suddenly, there shone from heaven upon me a great light”
96) (Studia Sinaitica vii, 92.11) ﺛﻢ طﻠﻊ ﻟﻠﻤﺴﯿﺢ ﻧﺠﻤﺎ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺴﻤﺎ ṯumma ṭalaʿ lil-masīḥ najman fī al-samā "Then a star rose to Christ in heaven”
97) (Studia Sinaitica vii, 99.10) ﻻ ﯾﻨﻘﺺ ﻣﻦ ﻣﺠﺪك ﻧﺒﯿﺎ وﻻ وﻟﯿﺎ وﻻ رﯾﺴﺎ lā yanquṣ min majd-ak nabiyyan wa-lā waliyyan wa-lā rīsan "There shall not fail from your glory a prophet nor a ruler nor a captain”
98) (Ibn Wahb 38, 2) 56ﻓﻠﻢ ﯾﺼﺒﮫ ﺷﯿﺎ fa-lam yuṣib-hu šay(y)an "And nothing struck him”
56 This example is debatable. Hopkins (1984: 170, n. 19) does not include the example because the is often written with the final alif regardless of syntax. Thus it is , ﺷﯿﺎ ,accusative-marked agent of the verb possible that the alif here is not an actual example of the accusative, but rather part of the standard orthographic representation of šay(y). Nevertheless I have included it precisely because the syntax corresponds to the other clear examples listed, and it is reasonable to suspect that because šay(y) occurs frequently in such contexts that the accusative form became the unmarked form of the noun. 136
99) (Levin, Matthew xiii. 28) ﻓﻌﻠﮫ اﻧﺴﺎﻧﺎ ﻋﺪوا faʿal-uh insānan ʿaduwwan57 “An enemy has done it”
As with the subjects of passive verbs, Blau (ASP §226.1-2) attributes this distribution to hypercorrection as well, though this time without mention of the parallels in related
Semitic languages (see below).
In ChA, sentences in which more than one subject of a verb is explicit, accusative marking can be found on all, or only some, of them. As Blau (ASP §226.2) notes, when accusative marking occurs on only some of the subjects, it usually marks those subjects that occur farther from the verb (examples taken from Blau ASP §226.2, 4).
100) (Burhan 71, 16-17) ﻟﻢ ﯾﻠﺤﻖ ﺗﻠﻚ اﻟﺨﻠﻄﺔ ﺗﻐﯿﺮا وﻻ اﺣﺘﯿﺎﻻ lam yalḥaq tilka al-ẖalṭa taġayyuran wa-lā iḥtiyālan “Change and transformation is not an inevitable consequence of this mixture”
In most of these examples, one of several negative adverbs is used, usually (wa)lā but also bilā and min ġayr.
101) (Burhan 26, 13) ﻻ ﯾﻨﺎﻟﮫ ﺳﯿﻼن وﻻ ﻣﺼﯿﺒﺔ وﻻ اﺣﺘﯿﺎﻻ وﻻ ﺗﻐﯿﺮ Lā yanāl-uh sīlān wa-lā maṣībah wa-lā iḥtiyālan wa-lā taġayyuran “He is not liable to accident or fortuitous happening, he does not change and alter”
102) (Burhan 76, 5-6) ﻣﻦ ﻏﯿﺮ اﺣﺘﯿﺎﻻ ﻣﻦ اﻟﺮوﺣﺎﻧﯿﺔ...وﻻ اﺣﺘﯿﺎﻻ ﻣﻦ...وﻻ ﺗﻐﯿﺮا وﻻ ﻓﺴﺎدا
is markingﻋﺪوا This example is less certain than the others. Blau (ibid.) questions whether the final alif in 57 the accusative, or whether instead it is an orthographic device used to mark final ū. He further notes that the .(in another manuscript (MS. Sinai ar. 75 اﻧﺴﺎن ,is written without the final alif اﻧﺴﺎﻧﺎ ,previous word 137 min ġayr iḥtiyālan min al-rūḥāniyyah...wa-lā iḥtiyālan min...wa-lā taġayyuran wa-lā fasādan "Without transformation from the spiritual...nor any transformation from...nor any change or corruption”
103) (Burhan 87, 6-8) ﺑﻼ ﺗﺨﻠﯿﻂ وﻻ اﺣﺘﯿﺎل وﻻ ﺗﻐﯿﯿﺮ وﻻ ﻓﺮﻗﺔ وﻻ اﻧﻘﻄﺎع وﻻ ﺗﺒﺮﯾﺎ Bi-lā taẖlīṭ wa-lā iḥtiyāl wa-lā taġayyur wa-lā farqah(?) wa-lā inqiṭāʿ wa-lā tabarriyan “Without confusion or transformation or change or separateness or division or the disowning”
The use of the accusative to mark agents of transitive verbs is the most surprising and unexpected aspect of its distribution. While the other uses of the accusative not only have ample parallels in other Semitic languages, they are typologically quite natural. I will examine what parallels exist in the Semitic languages, as well as offer some possible explanations below. For now, it suffices to say that it seems a priori unlikely that this usage results from hypercorrection per se, that is, from the misapplication of CA rules. It seems unlikely that authors consistently misidentified the agent of active transitive verbs as an object. Below I will examine alternative explanations.
4.2.3.2.5 Other Marginal Uses of Accusative: Other than the functions mentioned above, the accusative is most commonly found after the particleʾillā “except,” regardless of the nature of the sentence in which it occurs. As discussed above, the case of the noun after ʾillā in CA depends on the semantics of the sentence. In positive sentences, the noun is in the accusative; in negative sentences, the noun is usually in the nominative (Fischer 2002 §310 a,b):
104)
138 ﻗُﺘِ َﻞ ُﻛ ﱡﻠﮭُﻢ إ ّﻻ أَﺑﺎ َك qutila kullu-hum ʾillā ʾabāka "All were killed except your father”
105) ﻣﺎ ﻟﻨَﺎ ﻧَﺼﯿ ٌﺮ إ ّﻻ ﷲ ُ mā la-nā naṣīrun ʾillā allāhu “We have no helper except God”
However, as Fischer (ibid.) discusses, the noun following ʾillā is in the accusative in CA even when the semantics of the sentence are positive if:
a) The general term is accusative:
106) ھﻞ رأﯾﺖ أﺣﺪا إﻻ ﻋﻠﯿﺎ hal raʾayta ʾaḥadan ʾillā ʿaliyyan “Have you seen anyone but ʿAli?”
b) ʾillā precedes the general term:
107) ٌ◌ ﻣﺎ ﻟﻨﺎ إ ّﻻ ﷲَ ﻧﺼﯿﺮ mā la-nā ʾillā allāha naṣīrun “We have no helper except God”
In MA, the accusative often occurs following ʾillā regardless of the semantics of the sentence:
108) (Ibn Shahin 9.2, apud Blau JA: 186) פהל הדה אלא גורא ﻓﮭﻞ ھﺬا اﻻ ﺟﻮرا hal hāḏā ʾillā ǧawran "Is this other than injustice?
139 Another, slightly more common use of the accusative in MA is to mark the circumstantial clause. In this function there is no difference between CA and MA
(examples from Blau ASP §224.1.1.2):
109) (S 431 192, -2) وھﻮ ﺷﺎﻛﺮا wa-huwa šākiran li-llāh "...while thanking God”
110) (S 431 96b) وھﻮ ﻣﻄﻠﻮﺑﺎ ﺟﺎﻟﯿﺎ wa-huwa maṭlūban ǧāliyan "...while is is persecuted and exiled”
111) (S 193, -5) وأﻧﺎ ﻣﺎزﺣﺎ wa-ʾana māziḥan "while I was joking”
112) (SS 8, 7, 1ff.) وﺑﯿﻨﻤﺎ ادم ﻣﺴﺘﻤﻌﺎ ﻟﺨﻄﺎب رﺑﮫ اﯾﺎه وواﻗﻔﺎ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻣﻜﺎن اﻟﺠﻠﺠﻠﺔ… wa-bayna-mā ādam mustamiʿan li-ẖiṭāb rabb-uh ʾiyyāhu wa-wāqifan ʿ alā makān al- ǧulǧula "and while Adam was listening to the speech of his Lord to him and standing upon the place of Golgotha”
In order to understand what kinds of developments can be posited to explain these developments, it is necessary to examine the framework within which the hypercorrection explanation developed. Specifically, it will be important to highlight that the narrative is demonstrably false in a number of important points, and produces a situation in which not only much Arabic literature of the Islamic period, but also virtually all of the pre-Islamic material, would be labeled MA. 140 4.2.4 Blau’s Framework for Case in Islamic Period We have seen in our discussion of the MA evidence that the foremost scholar of the linguistic study of both JA and ChA, Joshua Blau, has set the framework within which virtually all of the historical linguistic analysis of these corpora is undertaken.
Thus Hopkins (1984: §160-172), while differing from Blau’s interpretations in a number of relatively minor places, nevertheless reproduces virtually the same categories for case marking in the early papyri that Blau establishes in his JA and ASP. Given the importance of Blau’s framework, it is worth examining his assumptions, and whether they stand under the weight of the evidence adduced so far. I will argue that they do not.
One of the most prolific scholars in the field over the past half-century, Blau has published on the history of Arabic, and specifically the place and importance of MA in that history, in a number of places.58 In order to understand Blau’s views on MA, one must understand how he conceptualizes the development of Arabic. The basic outline of
Blau’s framework is outlined most clearly in his paper “The Beginnings of the Arabic
Diglossia: A Study of the Origins of Neoarabic” (1977). In it, Blau essentially follows the native Arab historiography, namely that, prior to the Muslim conquests of the 7th century
AD, most Arabic speakers lived in the Arabian peninsula and spoke a variety that closely resembled CA, which included the desinential case inflection system marked by short and long vowels (ibid., §2).
Blau engages the epigraphic record as it was known at the time, especially the
Nabataean epigraphy, but argues that the peculiarities of writing Arabic and Aramaic
58 The most significant being: 1966-7; 1968; 1970; 1977; 1981; 1988. 141 produced a confused situation in which the underlying reality was not accurately represented (ibid., §4.2-4.3). Further, even if, for Blau, there were border dialects in the
Levant that had lost case inflection, this does not mean that all dialects had.
Finally, Blau (following Nöldeke (1910; 2003) argues that the Qurʾān, which reflects essentially the spoken dialect of Mecca in the 7th century AD, could not have been composed in a caseless variety (so pace Vollers 1906), because of the absence of pseudo-corrections (ibid., §5). Blau then concludes that there was essentially no diglossia before Islam, but that it arose as a result of the Great Arab Conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries AD, which led to imperfect acquisition of Arabic by the conquered peoples.
The most important consequence of this imperfect acquisition for Blau, as for the Arab grammarians, was the loss of case marking, which led to a change in linguistic type in
Arabic, from Old Arabic synthetic to NA analytic (ibid. §6).
Importantly for our purposes, Blau seems to believe that, once a dialect began to lose case, it did so quite quickly. So much is clear in statements, quoted above, such as
“one is inclined to attribute the occurrence of tanwīn -an in this position to hyper- correction emanating from the tendency to use case-endings” (Blau ASP §225.1, p. 336, n. 64). At the same time, Blau at a number of places admits that features etymologically related to case marking and tanwīn were retained in spoken dialects, usually of the bedouin (see e.g., JA appendix 3.b). However, any non-CA function of (almost always accusative) case in MA is attributed to hypercorrection (e.g., JA 177-9), even when, as
Blau himself notes, it is remarkably consistent (e.g., JA ibid.).
142 I have already noted the problematic nature of Blau’s reasoning, which is quite circular in many cases. His (and Nöldeke’s) assumption that the Qurʾān, and thus the dialect of Mecca, must have been essentially CA because of the impossibility of the believing community forgetting the caseless original is nothing but an assumption. In fact, given the upheavals of the first Islamic century, it is not at all difficult to imagine that most of those who originally heard the Qurʾān would have scattered or died during the course of the conquests. Thus transmission of the QCT and the method of performing it would not have necessarily been parallel. Further, it is entirely plausible that, as Islam spread, and especially as southern Iraq became the center of Qurʾānic (and grammatical!) study, a non-Ḥijazī performance register, perhaps one more broadly prestigious, became the manner deemed most befitting the sacred text of the newly dominant religion. In any event, as I argued above (see ch. 3) and elsewhere (see van Putten and Stokes forthcoming) the QCT clearly attests a variety that retained partial case marking, but had lost tanwīn. Appeals to the reading traditions of over a century later are unconvincing.
Perhaps more significant is the fact that, if we focus on case marking, then literally all examples of pre-Islamic Arabic would be considered MA! This is an important observation and deserves to be unpacked. As reviewed above in chapter 2, the
Safaitic, Ḥismaic and Nabataean corpora attest dialects of Arabic that have different degrees of case marking. The Graeco-Arabica provide further evidence for the gradual loss of case marking in the southern Levant already in the first few centuries CE. While
Blau acknowledges this, his argument that the rest of the peninsula, isolated from external influence, was unaffected by this is, as he admits, an argumentum ex silentio 143 (1977: 16).59 Further, the dialects represented by the Safaitic script were produced by nomads, who although certainly not entirely independent of the settled areas, nevertheless cannot be any less isolated than the bedouin of the Arabian peninsula (cf. Macdonald
1992). Finally, as Ahmad Al-Jallad has convincingly shown (2015a; forthcoming e), the
Arabian Peninsula was home to a great deal of linguistic diversity. Blau’s notion of border and core areas of Arabic in the pre-Islamic period is therefore no longer appropriate.
We can no longer assume that all dialects of Arabic lost case as a result of the conquests. Undoubtedly the trend toward leveling caseless forms was dominant at various points, perhaps especially in the first few Islamic centuries (see more below).
Nevertheless, that some dialects and traditions with case continued seems much more likely. More specifically, the epigraphic record shows that literary traditions and registers existed already in the pre-Islamic period which looked quite different than CA. Again, the Safaitic corpus attests a limited case system in which only the accusative is morphosyntactically marked, but also uses lam + IMPF to negate the past (see Al-Jallad
2015a: 155). Inscriptions in the Nabataean script, from ʿĒn ʿAvdat to Namāra, both
59 I note here that while I disagree with many of Blau’s assumptions, as well as his interpretations of the epigraphic material and the QCT, I do not totally disagree with his conclusions regarding diglossia. While diglossia (or perhaps more accurately, multiglossia; see Hary 1989) is characteristic of every speech community to one degree or another, I am not convinced that the dialects of those who participated in the poetic tradition behind CA were completely different from it. Certainly the stylistics common to poetry are different than those of other speech acts; nevertheless, the presence of CA case marking, for example, in spoken dialects is probable, and is confirmed by inscriptions in the southern Levant (see chapter 2 above). Further, as Ahmad Al-Jallad (forthcoming d) has highlighted, most of the early documentary evidence looks more like Ḥijāzī, which, as we saw above (chapter 2), and as argued more fully in van Putten & Stokes forthcoming, the case system in Ḥijāī, as reflected in the QCT, is not identical to CA. Diglossia therefore seems to have only arisen slowly, to have been unequally applicable to social contexts across the Islamic world, and might not have been especially significant in non-Muslim communities at all during the Medieval period. 144 clearly in prestigious and literary registers, are nevertheless quite different from CA.
Thus any assumption that CA would necessarily function as the only target for all literary genres, especially in non-Muslim communities, is problematic.
Even Blau’s more recent appraisals (cf. 2000) highlight the problem with this framework. When discussing, and ultimately defending, the separate notion of JA and
ChA as entities, Blau focuses on script and communal concerns as evidence of their distinctiveness (ibid., 52-5). I agree with Blau that JA and ChA represent literary traditions (ibid., 54 for JA, pp. 55-6 for ChA), though they still seem rather loosely connected. Nevertheless, the framework he envisions is still built on the Old Arabic /
Neo-Arabic divide, narrated in the traditional historical paradigm which is now basically obsolete. Ultimately we will be better served by distinguishing between literary registers and traditions on the one hand, and linguistic types and dialects on the other.
MA texts are not monolithic, including in their patterns of case marking. Indeed, as just shown, some attest a CA case distribution, though it is generally optional even there. Still, the presence of a consistent pattern of case distribution across JA and ChA, without the corresponding assumption of CA60 as the target, strongly suggests a real,
60 A word about script and language is in order here. By the classical JA period (10th - 15th centuries CE), scribes were replicating the conventions of Arabic orthography when using the Hebrew script to write Arabic (Khan 2007: 527-8). This could suggest a CA influence, at least at the orthographic level. But it should be remembered (cf. Al-Jallad forthcoming d) that the orthographic conventions were developed in the Ḥiǧāz to write a variety of Arabic different from that canonized in CA. Further, though many of the JA texts look quite classical to contemporary readers, in fact the morphological forms collected by the early grammarians were quite diverse. Subsequent organization of that diverse data within a single linguistic system should not be mistaken for linguistic unity. As Al-Jallad argues quite convincingly (ibid.), CA is essentially the leveling of the archaic nominal and verbal mood systems, preserved in the poetic register of central Arabic, across a diversity of morphological forms and features. Again, we find forms associated with CA, such as lam + IMPF negation, in Safaitic, which was clearly distinct from the poetic register 145 independent tradition that requires analysis and explanation on its own terms. In order to understand the functions of the accusative listed above, it will first be necessary to review the use of the accusative in the Semitic language family. I will also review the various functions of the accusative in CA in order to highlight possible antecedents to the system attested in these MA texts.
4.2.5 Accusative in Semitic and Classical Arabic As discussed in chapter 1, case marking for PS can be confidently reconstructed with accusative alignment (see most recently Hasselbach 2013). The agent of the fientive verb is marked with the nominative, as is the subject of intransitive verbs, whereas the patient is marked accusative. The accusative case has a wide variety of functions in addition to marking the direct object in those Semitic languages that synchronically attest case.61 In each of these languages, the accusative, marked by word-final -a, functions to mark the direct objects of a variety of verb classes, including fientive and verbs of motion, as well as various adverbial meanings (for a convenient overview, see
Hasselbach 2013: 292). In what follows, I will focus on the attestations of the accusative to mark the predicates of nominal sentences, existentials, the subjects of passive verbs, and the subjects of active verbs in Semitic, with a focus on Classical Arabic. I will highlight parallel developments that took place in Hebrew and Aramaic.
behind CA. Thus a series of anachronistic associations seems responsible for the assumption that anything that is attested in CA was part of that register only. 61 These include Akkadian, Ugaritic, Amarna Canaanite, Arabic, Gəʿəz, Hebrew and Aramaic. The latter two do not synchronically attest the full PS system of short and long vowels which morphosyntactically mark case, but both developed structures to regularly mark the DO. 14 6 4.2.5.1 Accusative Marking Nominal Predicates In addition to its more canonical functions shared across the Semitic language, there is some evidence for the use of the accusative to mark nominal predicates. The vast majority of attested forms in Semitic languages with triptotic inflection show nominative marking for nominal predicates:
Akkadian 113) (Old Babylonian; from Huehnergard and Woods 2004: 267): šarr-um ša Bābilim šū king the one of Babylon he He [is/was] king of Babylon
114) (von Soden 1995:224) H̲ammurapi šarr-um dann-um Hammurapi king-nom strong-nom “Hammurapi is the/a strong king”
Ugaritic 115) (Tropper 2000: 308, apud Hasselbach 2013: 260) Kptr ksu ṯbt-h Crete throne.nom seat-3ms.Gen “Crete is the seat of his throne”
Classical Arabic 116) al-baytu kabīrun DEF.house.nom big.nom “The house is big”
Thus many scholars have reconstructed one of the functions of the nominative case to mark subjects and predicates of verbless (or ‘nominal’) sentences (e.g., Huehnergard
2004: §3.3.2.3).
147 Some data, primarily in the form of personal names in limited corpora, such as
Old Akkadian, Eblaite and Amorite, attest to a murkier and more complicated distribution. One pattern that is fairly consistent across the attested corpora is the use of a, which Hasselbach (2013: 294) identifies as etymologically identical to the accusative, to mark predicates in verbless sentences (examples from ibid., §2.2.1):
Old Akkadian si-be-la “she is lord” sar-ru-la-ba “the king is a lion” ì-lum-a-ḫa “god is brother”
Eblaite a-ba-il “Il is father” a-ba-ma-lik “Malik is father” da-na-LUGAL “the king is powerful” na-ma-da-mu “Damu is favorable”
The degree to which personal names, which attest often-overlapping distributions, can be used to glean linguistic information about spoken language is debatable (Macdonald
1998; Al-Jallad 2017: 105-7). The corpora Hasselbach relies on present a messy picture when taken together. For example, the vowels u and a occur in any syntactic context, and often co-occur with Ø (Hasselbach 2013: §2.2.1). Further, the data for Amorite at this point consists entirely of personal names, so no comparison with actual texts can be made
(Al-Jallad and Van Putten forthcoming). When such comparisons can be made, the distribution attested in the personal names often does not match. In Eblaite, for example, the use of a to mark nominal predicates is only attested in personal names, but never in any text (ibid., 42, n. 114; Fronzaroli 1982: 106). Nevertheless, Hasselbach’s observation
148 that, amidst the rather chaotic distribution, the strong tendency for a to mark nominal predicates across these corpora is suggestive. For this reason, she reconstructs as original the function of accusative to mark nominal predicates (ibid., 294).
One possible manifestation of a predicate marked accusative in CA is found in the use of the accusative in CA occurs when it follows a pronoun, standing in apposition to the subject pronoun. According to the grammatical tradition, the predicate is used to specify the referent of the preceding pronoun:
117) naḥnu al-ʿurba ʾasẖā man baḏala we-NOM the-arabs-ACC most liberal the one who he-gives-PFT “We the Arabs are the most liberal among the generous”
ʾantum al-muʾminīna lā taǧzaʿū you-NOM the-believers-OBL not fear-IMPF-JUSS.2mp “You the believers do not fear”
The same usage occurs in certain cases wherein someone (usually God) is praised, blamed or reproached:
118) al-ḥamdu li-llāhi al-ḥamīda the-praise-NOM to-God-GEN the-praiseworthy-ACC “Praise be to god, who is praiseworthy”
These are typically treated as as type of specification of the pronoun (Arabic iẖtiṣāṣ), with the latter example a sub-variety of naṣb. It is difficult to know what to make of these examples, but they nevertheless seem to attest an appositional subject marked accusative.
Generally in Classical Arabic, nominal predicates in verbless clauses are marked nominative. However, 8th century CE debates about acceptable case marking for
149 predicates between scholars of Arabic grammar reveal a more complex picture.
Specifically, debates raged between groups of early Arabic grammarians in the early
Islamic cities Baṣra and Kufa concerning sentences such as the following (taken from
Talmon 2003: 182ff.):
119) fī-hā zaydun qāʾiman in-it Zayd-NOM standing-ACC “Zayd is standing in it” (lit. “in it Zayd is standing”)
120) hāḏā raǧulun qāʾiman this man-NOM standing-ACC “This is a man standing”
Sibawayh and the subsequent Baṣran school interpreted the accusative in these examples as circumstantial adjectives (ḥāl), but Farrāʾ and the Kufans reportedly analyzed them as predicates (ẖabar). Thus, Farrāʾ deems sentence (120) above as correct even if the participle is definite, i.e.,
121) hāḏā zaydun al-qāʾima This Zayd DEF-standing-PART-ACC “This is Zayd, the one standing”
Sibawayhi does not, since he holds that circumstantial adjectives are always indefinite
(ibid. 182). Other subsequent grammarians explained cases like example 121 above as instances of marking the adjective of a definite noun accusative. Importantly, many of the cases over which there was serious debate involve cases with a demonstrative or prepositional phrase.
150 Another instance in which predicates of nominal sentences are accusative involves the verb kāna “to be”:
122) al-baytu kabīrun DEF-house-NOM big.ACC “The house is big” but
123) kāna al-baytu kabīran To be-PERF-3ms DEF-house-NOM big-ACC “The house was big”
The same phenomenon of the predicate of kāna marked accusative occurs in Gəʿəz as well (Lambdin 1978: 37):
124) kona kāhena became.3ms priest.acc “He was/became a priest”
Various explanations have been put forth to account for the accusative marking of the predicate in this construction. The traditional explanation found in the scholars of the native Arab grammatical tradition is that the predicate here is a circumstantial adjective
(Arabic ḥāl). This explanation was followed by most early western scholars, including
Fleischer (1855: 576) and Brockelmann (1913: 357). Nöldeke (1897: 37) cautions, however, that the restrictions on the ḥāl synchronically in the CA tradition do not typically apply to the predicate of kāna.62
62 E.g., the typical restriction of the ḥāl to participles. 151 Bravmann (1953: 80ff.) argued against this, suggesting instead that kwn originally meant “to become,” and the predicate in the accusative would correspond with the second object in clauses with verbs meaning “to render, make.” Hasselbach (2013: 312) rejects this explanation because the meaning “to become” cannot be shown to be the primary meaning for kwn. Nevertheless, given that the class of verbs to which kāna belongs otherwise do have the meaning “to become,” and similar semantics for kāna are attested
(cf. Q55.37), an analogy cannot be ruled out. Further, Hasselbach’s argument seems to me to rest on a misunderstanding of aspect in this case. The suffix conjugation in Central
Semitic has the function, among others, of expressing the resultative. The resultative of
“to become” is “to be,” and arguing that one of these meanings is more primary or secondary is unwarranted. It is of course not unusual for a copular verb to treat its predicate as a direct object, cf. the following: English I am him; Dutch jij bent mij “He is me”; Berber iga urgaz aməskin.63
Hasselbach’s explanation for the accusative marking of the predicate (ibid.: 313) is in many ways attractive. She argues that the accusative marking on the predicate continues an early, quite possibly original distribution where the predicate was represented by the base, unmarked form of the noun. A similar idea, namely that the accusative is the unmarked form of the noun in the Semitic case system, is proposed by
Bar-Asher (2009: §1.6.2; for more on Bar-Asher’s proposal, see below). In such a scenario, appealing to the supposed adverbial nature of the predicate would be
63 I am grateful to Marijn van Putten for these Dutch and Berber examples, as well as for a very helpful note on a draft of this chapter concerning aspect and semantics in this section. 152 unnecessary. Nevertheless, several questions remain unanswered in such a scenario, most significantly to my mind is why the predicate in base nominal sentences is consistently marked in the nominative. If Hasselbach is correct, then predicates in Arabic would have continued the PS distribution, being marked as accusative. An analogy would therefore be necessary to explain why nominal sentences without kāna shifted from NOM - ACC >
NOM - NOM. It is possible that, in such equational sentences, where predicates are equated with the subjects, they were simply analyzed as subjects and marked nominative.64
Before moving on, it is worth pointing out that, according to the reports of the early grammarians, there was diversity as to the marking of the constituents of clauses with kāna. In the Ḥijāz, Ibn Jinnī reported that it was common for both the subject and predicate of kāna clauses to be marked nominative: kāna al-baytu kabīrun instead of kabīran (Rabin 1951: 174). The same is true of clauses beginning with the deictic particle
ʾinna (on which see below). To my knowledge there were no reports of dialects in which both constituents were marked accusative.
4.2.5.2 Accusative and Existential Predication Clauses expressing existence are variously marked across the Semitic language family. The NW Semitic languages, for example, share a single particle *ʾīṯ (Hebrew yēš;
Ugaritic ʾṯ; Aramaic ʾīṯ(ay), all < *yiṯ). In CA, existence is typically expressed by the use of a locative adverbs hunāka “there,” and ṯammah “there.” In the modern Arabic dialects, however, a grammaticalized locative preposition with a 3ms pronominal suffix is used, fīh/bīh/boh “in it (3msg).” The same seems to be the case in Gəʿəz (Lambdin 1978: 37),
64 I thank John Huehnergard for this point. 153 and potentially the Akkadian verb, bašûm “to be” (< *ba šu “in it” ?) (Rubin 2005: 45-6).
The etymology of the latter is not clear, however. Finally, several scholars have proposed a connection between the various NW Semitic existential particles derived from *yiṯ and the Eblaite verb išûm, “to have”65 (Blau 1972; Bar-Asher 2011: §3.1). If this identification is correct, then the particle, as a marker of existential clauses, could then be reconstructed to Proto-Semitic.66
Bar-Asher (2009: 425ff.; 2011) argues that existentials in Semitic can also occur without any overt existential marking. That is, for existential predication in Semitic, all that is required is a noun:
Akkadian:
126) (Cohen 2005, example 7) Nukurtum “There is a war”
Existential predication consisting solely of a noun is also attested in the Safaitic corpus:
127) (KRS 1944, apud Al-Jallad 2015a: 166) h mlk h-s¹my my “O king of the sky, (let there be) water”
Existential clauses with various types of complements, such as locative or adverbial, are quite common:
CA
65 One the question of how an existential particle developed into a verb of possession, see Bar-Asher (2011: 75-8). 66 There are a number of tricky issues involved in this debate, however. One is the lack of congruence between the Akkadian form, which should be < *s¹, and the etymology of the NW Semitic forms, seemingly < *ṯ. Bar-Asher (2011: 74-5), following Blau (1972), suggests a “proto-doublet”: *yiš (here š = s¹), from which Hebrew (yeš), Arabic (laysa), Akkadian (laššu), and Eblaite (išûm) descended, and *ʾīṯay, from which Ugaritic (ʾṯ) and Aramaic (ʾīṯay) originated. 154 128) hunāka baytun ṣaġīrun bayna al-šaǧaratayni there house-NOM small-NOM between DEF-two trees-OBL “There is a small house between the two trees”
Case marking in existential clauses in Semitic varies. Typically, the noun at the core of the predication is marked nominative, as in the Akkadian example above. In a few cases, however, the noun can be marked accusative. In Gəʿəz, for example, which uses a prepositional phrase b “in, with,” + 3ms suffix to mark existence, the core noun is regularly, but not exclusively, marked accusative (Lambdin 1978: 122):
129) bo māya alongside bo māy there is water-ACC there is water-nonACC67
130) ʾalbo ẖebesta alongside ʾalbo ẖebest there is not bread-ACC there is not bread-nonACC
The verb kona (< kwn) is also used in Gəʿəz to express existence, and the noun is again optionally marked accusative:
131) kona barada alongside kona barad it was hail-ACC it was hail-nonACC
In CA, existential predication is usually indicated with the locative adverb hunāka
“there,” and the noun after hunāka is always in the nominative:
132) hunāka kitābun there is book-NOM “There is a book”
67 In Gəʿəz, final short high vowels were lost following a merger of short high vowels in all positions. This led synchronically to a system in which the case distinctions were ACC/non-ACC (Weninger 2011: 1132- 3). 155 As in Gəʿəz, the verb kāna (< kwn) can be used as a copula indicating existence, called by the Arab Grammarians (kāna l-tāmma “the complete kāna”):
133) (Wright II §41) kāna tājirun there was a merchant-NOM “There was/lived a merchant”
In CA, marking the noun in the accusative signifies an attribution, rather than existential predication:
134) (ibid.) kāna tāǧiran he was a merchant-ACC “He was/lived as a merchant”
Thus in CA the noun in the unmarked existential constructions is marked in the nominative.
There are several phenomena in CA, however, which can be analyzed as originally consisting of existential predication wherein the noun is marked in the accusative. Relatively frequent is the use of a noun in the accusative to indicate an indirect command (examples from Wright II §35):
135) kitābaka book-ACC-your “Take the book” (lit. “your book”)
136) mahlan slow-ACC “Move slowly!” (lit. “slowly”)
137) ṣabran wa-la ǧazaʿan
156 patience-ACC and not grief-ACC "Be patient and do not hasten to be concerned” (lit. “patience and not concern”)
In other cases, the notion expressed is that of a wish:
138) taban laka perdition-ACC to you-MasSg “Go to hell!” (lit. “perdition to you”)
139) saqyan laka rain-ACC to you-MasSg “May there be rain for you”
These are typically explained as predications in which an underlying verb, usually from the same root (Arabic mafʿūl muṭlaq), is understood:
140) (ẖuḏ) kitābaka (take-IMV-2ms) your book-ACC “Take your book!”
Or
141) (uṣbur) ṣabran wa-la (taǧzaʿ) ǧazaʿan be patient p patience-ACC and no you.worry-IMPF concern-ACC “Be patient and do not worry”
However, there is no reason a priori to assume an underlying verb. This most likely stems from the grammatical system within which the Arabic grammarians worked, in which any overt case marking required a governor (ʿāmil) to assign the case (cf.
Versteegh 1997: 27-38). I would suggest that these phenomena each represent developments from an original existential predication, which, depending on the semantics
157 of the root involved, evolved into a wish, command, etc.68 Indeed, PA can be safely reconstructed without an overt marker of existential predication (cf. Al-Jallad 2015b: 43), which is attested historically in the Safaitic corpora. These CA forms can be understood as continuations of the original situation.
This development is even clearer in examples such as:
142) al-ʾasada al-ʾasada the-lion-ACC the-lion-ACC “Watch out for the lion!” (from an original “There’s a lion! There’s a lion!”)
Interestingly, the same construction is possible using pronouns in reference to people. In this case, the pronoun is in the accusative, suffixed to the direct object marker ʾiyyā (<
*ʾin yā):
143) ʾiyyāka ʾiyyāka DO-you-MS DO-you-MS “Take care!”
The DO-pronoun construction can precede a noun in the accusative, or verb in the imperfect, with the same meaning of warning or prohibition:
144) ʾiyyāka al-ʾasada Do-you-MS the-lion-ACC “Watch out for the lion!”
145) ʾiyyāka wa-ʾan tafʿala kaḏā DO-you-MS and-nominalizer do-IMPF-SUBJ thus “Beware of doing such”
68 Cf. the occurrence of the existential in some Safaitic inscriptions, like KRS 1944 (quoted above), in which the existential phrase consisting of just the noun my “water” is best translated “let there be water” (see Al-Jallad 2015a: 166). 158
In these last examples, the DO marker ʾiyyā seems to function more as a topicalizer than a marker of existential predication as such.
Another example of apparent accusative-marked existentials that I’ve found, in the Qurʾān:
146) Q83.28 ﻋﯿﻨﺎ ﯾﺸﺮب ﺑﮭﺎ اﻟﻤﻘﺮﺑﻮن ʿaynan yašrabu bihā l-muqarrabūna “There is a spring from which those near [to Allah] drink”
In the context of the preceding verses, there is no verb nor subject with which the word
ʿayn can be connected as an adverb or object, thus it appears that this is an example of existential predication expressed by a noun in the accusative.
147) Q2:239 ﻓﺈن ﺧﻔﺘﻢ ﻓﺮﺟﺎﻻ أو رﻛﺎﺑﺎ fa-ʾin ẖiftum fa-riǧālan ʾaw rukāban “And if you fear (an enemy, then pray) on foot or riding” (lit. “And if you fear, then men on foot or riding”)
Here again, there is no explicit predicate to which we can assign the accusative here as an adverb; rather, it seems plausible to interpret the use of the accusative here as, at least originally, reflecting an existential clause, perhaps expressing, as with the examples in
Safaitic and above, a wish: let you be on foot, or riding.
As is more generally well known, negation of existentials in CA is accomplished by the negative adverb lā and a noun marked in the accusative. When negating the existence of any member of the class of things signified by the noun, the noun occurs
159 morphologically indefinite in the accusative but without tanwīn (Arabic lā li-nafī al-jins
“lā to negate the group”) (examples from Wright II § 39):
148) lā ʾilāha ʾillā llāhu There is not a god-ACC except Allah-NOM “There is no god but Allah”
149) lā riǧāla hunā There is not men-ACC here “There are no men here”
When lā is used to negate a noun that is modified by an adnominal phrase that limits the scope of the negation to a single member of the group, then tanwīn occurs:
150) lā ẖayran min Zaydin ʿindanā There is not better-ACC from Zayd-GEN at-us “There is no better man than Zaid in our opinion”
Recently, Bar-Asher (2009; 2011) has argued that the various possessive structures in Semitic should all be considered manifestations of existential predication.
The most common ways of expressing possession in Semitic are via what Bar-Asher
(2011) calls predicative possessive constructions (PPCs), which include the use of various prepositions, including li “to, for,” and bi “with, at.” The basic structure of these clauses are PREP + PRONOUN (possessor) NOUN (possessed). As with basic existential predication, the possessed noun is typically in the nominative:
Akkadian 151) (Sumer 1431 no. 12:24, apud Bar-Asher 2011: 62) ana yâšim šeum ul ibašši to me-DAT barley-NOM not to be-IMPF-3ms
160 “I don’t have barley”
Biblical Hebrew 152) (1 Sam 1:2) we-lô štē nāšîm and to him two wives “He had two wives”
Biblical Aramaic 153) (Ezra 4.16) ḥalāq baʿabar naharā lā ʾītay lāk portion-NOM in-across-of river no there is to you “You will not have a portion in the other side of the river”
In a number of Semitic languages, however, the possessed noun is marked in the accusative:
Gəʿəz 154) (Lambdin 1978: 122) beya warqa with me gold-ACC “I have gold”
155) ʾi-kono walda Not-it is-to him a son “He had no son”
Biblical Hebrew 156) (Num 5:10, apud Waltke & O’Connor 1990: 182) wə-ʾīš ʾeṯ-qodāšāw lô yihəyû and-man ACC-his offerings to him be-FUT-3ms “As for every person, his offerings will belong to him”
Jewish Babylonian Aramaic 157) (Bar-Asher Siegal 2013: 105) אי איתיה ליצרא דע׳ז בשנך הוה כיסכסתוה כסכוסי “If the temptation (ACC) of idolatry had existed in your time, you would have chewed it up” 161
Modern Hebrew 158) (Bar-Asher 2011: 60) yeš le-rina et ha-sefer there is to Rina ACC DEF-book “Rina has the book”
Modern Arabic 159) (Jordanian, from author’s fieldwork)69 kull il-waget illī ʿindī iyyāh DEF-time that at me ACC-it “All the time that I have”
Some scholars have argued that the use of the accusative in these languages to mark the possessed noun is secondary, due to the transitivization of the possessive construction based on the semantics “to have” (e.g., Hasselbach 2013: 303). Bar-Asher, on the other hand, rejects this notion, at least for Modern Hebrew, based on the fact that the phenomenon occurs with other existential clauses as well, where a similar process of transitivization cannot be appealed to (2009: 360, n. 4).
Finally, the accusative marking of the noun following the particle ʾinna deserves comment here. Traditionally, this particle is analyzed as a presentative particle, usually translated “indeed” (Fischer 2002: §339). Ariel Bloch (1986), however, has argued that the translation of “indeed” is based on theoretical considerations and tradition, rather than on actual usage. Rather, he argues that ʾinna was originally a deictic used as a presentative (ibid., 113). He gives examples from early grammarians, primarily
Sibawayh, and examples like:
69 Since the modern Arabic dialects do not have a function case system, and the DO marker ʾiyyā is only used with pronouns, most of these cases occur only in relative clauses where a pronoun is used to refer back to the head. For more on the uses of the accusative in the modern dialects, see below, chapter 6. 162 160) ʾinna mālan wa-ʾinna waladan wa-ʾinna ʿadadan DEIC money-ACC and-DEIC boy-ACC and-DEIC number-ACC “There is money and there is a boy and there is quantity”
Bloch suggests, based on CA parallels such as ṯammata and hunāka “there,” that the development of deictic > existential marker is natural (ibid., 117). So for Bloch, the use of ʾinna + noun to mean “here is X” was then quite naturally extended to mean “X exists/is.” Bloch explains the use of the accusative along with this particle as owing to its origin in what he calls a nuclear presentative structure expressing objecthood (ibid., 118-
9).
Bloch’s argument seems to be based on the similarities between ʾinna (and similar particles) and verbs, a similarity noted already in the native grammatical traditional where these particles are called ḥurūf mušabbahah bil-fiʿl, “particles similar to verbs.”
Hasselbach (2013: 310-11) argues against any association between these particles and verbal governance, as well as the presence of other presentative/deictic particles that take nouns in the nominative, especially ʾiḏā. Instead, she argues that the accusative in this context, like with kāna, reflects the fact that the accusative was originally the default form of the noun in Semitic.
There are two possibile implications to be drawn from these parallel structures in
Semitic. It is possible that the arguments of existentials were marked a-marked. A piece of evidence supporting this interpretation is the occurrence of the accusative with the verb išûm in Eblaite. John Huehnergard has suggested to me (p.c.) that we this might be a retention of its original distribution, before it evolved into a verb marking possession. If
163 so, then the West Semitic examples discussed above, combined with the Eblaite evidence, could suggest that accusative marking in clauses with *yiṯ was Proto-Semitic.
In most Akkadian, however, arguments of existential clauses (with bašûm) are marked nominative (Bar-Asher 2011: 77).70 Alternatively, the accusative-marked arguments could represent independent developments in each language based on internal analogies.
If Hasselbach and Bar-Asher are correct in arguing that the accusative was originally the unmarked form of the noun, then retention seems likely. If not, then it is almost certain that they represent later developments. Whatever position we take on this issue, the presence of accusative-marked arguments of existentials is certainly attested in Semitic, including CA. However, while this function is clearly attested, it was marginalized during the CA standardization process (cf. Talmon 2003). Synchronically, it seems unlikely that speakers interpreted the examples taken from CA as existential marking. I thus see it as highly unlikely that speakers would misanalyze and generalize a non-CA rule that all existentials were to be marked accusative. In our discussion of MA, then, hypercorrection seems a priori unlikely. I suggest, rather, that the use of the accusative to mark arguments in the literature reviewed above continued an earlier possibility, which was itself either retained from an ancestor variety, or developed in proto-Arabic based on an analogy.
70 The reflex of PS *ayn “there is not,” occurs in Akkadian starting in the Middle Babylonian period as yānu (< *yaʾn (metathesis) < *ʾayn), where it is typically construed with the nominative, not the accusative. The same is true of Akkadian laššu “there is not,” (~ Arabic laysa; Aramaic lāʾīṯ) (J. Huehnergard, p.c.). Alternatively, von Soden argues that Akkadian yānu is from the interrogative ʾayyānu, “where,” and thus not a reflex of PS negative existential *ʾayn (von Soden GAG §111b; I thank J. Huehnergard for this reference). 164 4.2.5.3 Accusative Marking and Passive Verbs Subjects of passive verbs, which are the logical patients insofar as they receive the action of the verb, are typically marked, as subjects typically are in Semitic, nominative.
Passive structures in Semitic typically follow one of a few patterns. In some languages, like CA and Biblical Hebrew, the vowel pattern of a verbal stem is altered in a pattern of ablaut:
CA 161) yaktubu al-kātibu kitāban writes-IMPF-3ms DEF-author-NOM book-ACC “The author writes the book”
162) yuktabu l-kitābu be written-IMPF-3ms DEF-book-NOM “The book is written”
Biblical Hebrew 163) (Ps. 85:9) kî yəḏabbēr šālôm ʾel ʿammô for speak-IMPF-3ms peace unto people-his “For he will speak peace to his people”
164) (Esther 2.23) way-yevuqqaš had-dāvār and-be investigated-IMPF-3ms DEF-matter “When the affair was investigated”
In most Semitic languages, certain verbal stems express the passive of other corresponding stems. So, for example, in Akkadian, as in many Arabic varieties, as well as Biblical Hebrew, the base verbal stem (G stem) is made passive by the N-stem (Arabic
VII stem - infaʿala):
165 Akkadian 165) (Huehnergard 1998: 361) i-ṣbat-ū-šu seize-PRET-3mp-3ms ACC “They seized him”
166) iṣṣabit be seized-PRET-3ms “He was seized”
Jordanian Arabic 167) (from author’s unpublished recordings) inkatab li-ktāb be written-3ms DEF-book “The book was written”
In other languages, like Gəʿəz and Aramaic, the N-stem was lost, and T-stems became the primary means of passivization, including the G-stem:
Gəʿəz 168) (Lambdin 1978: 90) ḥanaṣa beta build-PERF-3ms house-ACC “He built a/the house”
169) taḥanṣa bet be built-PERF-3ms house-nonACC “A/the house was built”
Syriac 170) (Thackston 1999: 109) ekal eat.PERF.3ms “He ate”
171) eteḵel 166 be eaten.PERF.3ms “It was eaten”
A final strategy for passivization, which is nevertheless quite common across the
Semitic language family, is the use of so-called impersonal passives, usually in the third person singular or plural. The logical subject of the sentence is often referred to with a preposition. This is especially common in CA and Akkadian:
CA 172) ġušiya ʿalayhi be covered.PERF.3ms over him “He fainted” (lit. “it was covered over him”)
173) ʾutiya la-hu bi-kitābin be brought.PERF.3ms to him with book-GEN “He was brought a book” (lit. “it came to him with a book”)
Akkadian 174) (Huehnergard 1998: 361) ana awīlê šunūti aššum alākim ittašpar to men.OBL them.OBL concerning go.INF.GEN be sent.PRET.3ms “Those men have been commanded to go” (lit. “to those men concerning going it was sent”)
Scholars have long recognized, however, that in a number of Semitic languages, subjects of passive verbs are marked accusative instead of the expected nominative
(Brockelmann 1931; Blau 1954; Khan 1984). This occurs for example in Gəʿəz, Biblical
Hebrew, and several dialects of Aramaic:
Gəʿəz 175) (Tropper 2002: 204)
167 wa-tawəhba l-ottu mabāḥta71 and-be given-PERF-3ms to-him power-ACC “And power was given to him”
Biblical Hebrew 176) (2 Kgs. 18:30) we-lō tinnāṯēn ʾeṯ-hā-ʿīr haz-zōt be-yaḏ meleḵ and-not.be.given-IMPF-3fs ACC-DEF-city DEF-this in-hand king of ʾaššûr Assur “And this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assur”
Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (examples from Folmer 2008: 149) 177) ʾtr dytḥzh yt qmyʿh dn place REL-be.seen-IMPF-3ms ACC amulet-DEF this “Wherever this amulet (ACC) will be seen”
Though rare, examples in CA occur as well (examples from Nöldeke 1875: 472):
178) Variant reading of Q45.1372 li-yuǧzā qawman bi-mā kānū yaksibūn Let-be recompensed-IMPF-3ms people-ACC with what be-PERF-3mp earn- IMPF-3mp “May a people be recompensed for what they used to earn”
179) (Cod Lugd 588 S. 28)
71 As John Huehnergard has pointed out to me (p.c.), this example is also debatable. It is possible that, synchronically, the subject of the sentence is “he,” where lotu is used for emphasis. In this case, mabāḥta would be the direct object. A parallel construction to this analysis would be tawahebku maaṣḥafa “I was given the book,” where the subject is “I.” 72 The reading traditions (Ar. qirāʾāt) are generally in line with the traditions canonized and standardized by the grammarians in the 8th - 10th centuries CE (Owens 1990). This example is admittedly far from normalized CA, as my colleague Marijn van Putten has pointed out to me. While that is true, of course, the reading traditions also exhibit other deviations from standard CA (cf. the Warsh tradition of reading alif maqṣūra as ē). This is presumably due to the fact that the reading traditions, while in the same set of traditions from which CA was drawn and standardized, which Al-Jallad (forthcoming c) has suggested was primarily archaic nominal inflection, they developed before the prescriptivism characteristic of the 10th century CE and following. Indeed, it seems likely that the reading traditions that have been transmitted to us were selected because of their closer relationship to standardized CA. If so, examples like this one might have been more common in some recitation traditions, but have been largely filtered out subsequently. 168 fa-law waladat faqīratu ǧirwi kalbin la- so-if give birth-PERF-3fs poor-NOM puppy-GEN dog-GEN then-be subba insulted-3ms
180) li-ḏālik al-ǧirwi l-kilābā for that DEF-puppy-GEN DEF-dogs-ACC “So if a poor the runt gave birth, then ??”
181) (Šarḥ šuḏūr aḏ-ḏahab, Bulaqer Druck, S. 61) ʾutīḥa lī min al-ʿidā naḏīran “An oath (ACC) was given to me from ʿida”
182) (Qaṭar-annadâ, Bulaqr Druck, S. 61) mā dām maʿniyyan bi-ḏikrin qalba-h “As long as his heart (ACC) is concerned with remembering”
There is at least one example I have found in the Qurʾān that is part of the Ḥafs reading tradition, the most widely used reading tradition today:
183) Q44:4-5
ﻓﯿﮭﺎ ﯾُﻔﺮق ﻛﻞ أﻣﺮ ﺣﻜﯿﻢ...أﻣﺮا ﻣﻦ ﻋﻨﺪﻧﺎ إﻧّﺎ ﻛﻨﺎ ﻣﺮﺳﻠﯿﻦ fīhā yufraq kullu ʾamrin ḥakīmin In it be distinguished.IMPF.3ms every.NOM matter.GEN wise.GEN
ʾamran min ʿindinā ʾinnā kunnā mursilīn matter.ACC from at us DEICT.we to be.PERF.1cp send.PART.OBL “On that night, every precise matter is made distinct…(every) matter (ACC) from us. Indeed, we were to send (a messenger)”
The last example is admittedly ambiguous, but the most natural reading based on the text and reading tradition is that the word ʾamr at the beginning of verse 5 is a subject of the passive verb yufraq at the beginning of verse 4. It is also possible that this is an example
169 of an existential accusative, as with ʿaynan in Q83.28 (quoted above). It is, of course, also possible that that reading traditions in which yufraq is passive do not preserve the original reading, and that rather the verb was originally active, yafruq. In that case, the verb would seemingly refer back to verse 1, and the kitāb mubīn “clear/clarifying book,” namely the Qurʾān, suggesting that it was the Qurʾān that would reveal every matter.
Even if we consider this the most likely original reading of the text, the example still stands as an acceptable structure in the reading tradition. At least one example from the
Qurʾān seems to attest the subject of an active intransitive verb:
184) Q18.5 ﻣﺎ ﻟﮭﻢ ﺑﮫ ﻣﻦ ﻋﻠﻢ وﻻ ﻻﺑﺎﯾﮭﻢ ﻛﺒﺮت ﻛﻠﻤﺔ ﺗﺨﺮج ﻣﻦ اﻓﻮھﻢ إن ﯾﻘﻮﻟﻮن إﻻ mā lahum bi-hī min ʿilmin wa-lā li-ʾābāʾihim kaburat kalmitan not to them of it from knowledge-GEN and-not to their fathers be grave-PERF-3fs word- ACC taẖruǧu min ʾafwāhi-him ʾin yaqūlūl ʾillā come out-IMPF-3fs from mouths-their if say-IMPF-3mp except “They have no knowledge of it, nor had their fathers. Grave is the word that comes out of their mouths; they speak not except…”
It is probable that many of the examples attested in the Semitic languages are the result of a reanalysis. In Gəʿəz, for example, the example (175) quoted above is likely due to the fact that the G-stem verb is doubly transitive. It seems likely, with Hasselbach
(2013: 156), that the promoted subject (mabāḥta) was synchronically associated with objectness, and thus, as in the G-stem, marked accusative. The semantic association that
170 the subjects of passive verbs retain, despite being syntactically the subject, is very likely responsible for the instances from Aramaic mentioned above as well.
The Hebrew example is part of a larger trend in the language, beginning in the late Biblical period (LBH), in which the direct object marker ʾeṯ can mark subjects of active verbs, as well as nominal predicates (examples taken from Hasselbach 2013: §4.6):
- Subject of Passive Verbs 185) way-yiwwālēḏ la-ḥanôḵ ʾeṯ-ʿîrāḏ And-be born-IMPF 3ms to-Enoch DO-Irad “And Irad was born to Enoch” (Gen. 4:18)
186) ʾeṯ-ʾarbaʿaṯ ʾēlle yu-lləḏû lə-hā-rāfā bə-ḡaṯ DO-four these be born-IMPF-3mp to-DEF-PN in-PN “These four were born to Rapa in Gat” (2 Sam. 21:22)
- Subject of Active Verbs 187) û-vā(ʾ) hā-ʾarî wə-ʾeṯ had-dôv and-came-PERF-3ms DEF-lion and-DO-DEF-bear wə-nāśā(ʾ) śe and-take.PERF.3ms sheep “And a lion came and a bear (ACC) and carried off a sheep” (1 Sam 17:34)
- Predicate of Verbless Clause 188) kol-he-ʿārîm ʾašer ti-ttənû la-lwīyyîm arbāʿîm û-šəmōne ʿîr all-DEF-cities REL give.IMPF.2mp to-DEF-Levites forty and-eight city
ʾeṯ-hen wə-ʾeṯ-miḡrəšê-hen DO-them and-DO-pasturelands-their “All cities which you give to the Levites shall be forty-eight cities, them and their pasturelands” (Num 35:7)
- Deictic 189) ʾôṯ-ô hay-yôm DO-it DEF-day “This very day” (Rabbinic Hebrew) 171
190) ʾot-o ʾīš yašav šam DO-him man sit.PERF.3ms there “That very man sat there”
Various explanations of this phenomenon in Hebrew have been proposed. Most (e.g.,
Brockelmann 1913; Albrecht 1929) have suggested these verbs were originally active, but were subsequently misunderstood and repointed as passive by the Masoretes. Blau
(1954) argues that most of the cases are 3ms impersonal passives and thus take a direct object marked by ʾeṯ. Khan (1984) argued that the use of ʾeṯ in BH was governed by the degree of individuation, hence its use with primarily human referents. Garr (1991) makes the interesting proposal that it is the degree of affectedness that determines the use of ʾeṯ.
Specifically, he suggests that grammatical roles, such as agent and patient, are what are primarily differentiated, rather than the syntactic functions of subject and object.
Hasselbach (2013: §4.6) argues rather that ʾeṯ developed from accusative marker to deictic, potentially owing to its origin as a preposition. Ultimately, she labels ʾeṯ with these functions a topic-marker (ibid., 165). The most recent and, in my opinion convincing, explanation has been put forward by Bekins (2014). Bekins traces the developments of the distribution of ʾeṯ, and applies the framework of differential object marking (DOM) He argues that ʾeṯ developed from an original accusative marker, which marked canonical objects high on the definiteness scale (mainly proper nouns and pronouns). As the system matured, the use of ʾeṯ was extended to mark objects that were much lower on the definiteness scale, as well as to other constituents that are not, technically speaking, objects. These include constituents that semantically are affected by
172 the action or state of a verb, even if, syntactically, they are the subjects. This is how, for example, Bekins explains the occurrence of ʾeṯ in the examples discussed above, which, as others have noted, typically involve verbs where the subject is in some sense patient
(Bekins 2014: §2.4.3.2).
There are numerous parallels between these BH examples and the MA examples discussed above. As I noted, the verbs that typically license accusative marking on their syntactic subjects are ones where the subject is experiencer or patient, as with BH. Bekins even notes that, in a few instances in BH, ʾeṯ is used in enumerations, as in some cases in
MA (though, in BH, it usually marks the initial noun) (ibid.: 47). Unlike in Hebrew, however, the accusative marker in these Middle Arabic texts reflects the extension of a originally indefinite object marker. Still, the parallels are striking, and serve to illustrate how similar developments can take place independently in related languages.73
4.3 MA ACCUSATIVE - A NEW PROPOSAL MA texts constitute a diverse corpus representing any number of different lects and varieties. Thus there is no reason to assume a single explanation for all of the features attested. As we saw above, however, the use of tanwīn alif to mark several functions, which are unique to these corpora, consistently in texts written in JA and ChA suggests a common set of developments at the very least, if not common origin. Given that we do not have evidence for the development of these features from the accusative case system
73 I thank John Huehnergard for bringing Bekins’ work to my attention. Though I did not have time to apply a similar framework, I believe that DOM has much to offer the analysis of MA case marking. I plan to undertake such an analysis in a forthcoming work. 173 attested in CA, and to a slightly more limited degree, QCT, the following set of proposals can only be tentative.
First, as I have remarked throughout this chapter, the assumption that Arabic at the beginning of Islam was composed of two and only two registers, CA and dialects that looked like the modern dialects, is demonstrably false. The pre-Islamic epigraphic evidence attests varieties with case at several stages of development. The Safaitic corpus attests a variety with a functional accusative, with nominative and genitive, at least on singular nouns, unmarked. The QCT attests a functional case system, with each case marked when non-word final, but with only accusative marked word-finally. Tanwīn is virtually completely absent. And as Al-Jallad (forthcoming d) has recently argued, a scribal tradition based on a Ḥiǧāzī prestige register seems to have spread, based on the features attested in the early papyri and the Psalm Fragment. In Al-Jallad’s formulation,
CA standardization involved merging the various morphological variants with the archaic nominal inflection preserved in the literary register of central Arabia, perhaps to be associated with the confederation of Maʿadd. Its rise to prominence was presumably relegated to certain contexts and genres (such as poetry, oration, and Muslim sacred dialogue), and also uneven, centered in Iraq and centers of Muslim learning.
Given that we have several examples for the pre-Islamic period of dialects in which the accusative was the only functional, or fully functional, case, we can plausibly begin with the assumption that the accusative marking in these MA texts reflects a dialect
(or perhaps dialects) that still possessed a functional accusative at the very least. For the main functions of the accusative (documented above), I offer the following observations. 174 The use of the accusative to mark nominal predicates to such an extent is unique among attested Arabic varieties, but I think can be understood in the context of the variation attested in Semitic and CA.74 While the evidence in Semitic is primarily for nominative marking of the predicate, there is, as noted above, some evidence for early accusative marking of the predicate. Bar-Asher (2009: §1.6.2) and Hasselbach (2013:
324-5) argue that accusative is so varied in Semitic because it is the unmarked, or perhaps better unspecified, case. There are instances reported by the grammarians of accusative predicates in base nominal clauses. Additionally, predicates of clauses with kāna and its sisters, the negators laysa, and, in the Ḥiǧāz mā, are regularly in the accusative case. For kāna, this might be a legacy of its original meaning, “to stand (firm),” with the accusative one of specification (Arabic tamyīz). There is nothing about laysa or mā that would lead one a priori to expect accusative marking of the predicate, but laysa was interpreted as a type of verb (hence its inflection on the pattern of the suffix conjugation). This could have led to its categorization with kāna as well. The use of mā perhaps followed. It is not difficult to imagine, for example, the generalization of the accusative from a clause like
Q12:31 mā hāḏā bašaran “this is not a man,” to hāḏā bašaran.
Another factor worth considering is that, aside from nominal predicates, examples of circumstantial adverbs (ḥāl) are also attested. Specifically, the syntax of many of the attested examples with ḥāl accusatives are identical to regular nominal clauses: wa-hū maṭlūban
74 At this point, I am agnostic as to whether this variation was present in Proto-Semitic or not. As I mentioned above, if Hasselbach is correct that the accusative case is the un-marked, default case in Semitic, this variation is likely to be Proto-Semitic. If not, however, then appeal to secondary developments and analogies in each language is necessary. Given the nature of the reanalyses proposed, this is a viable option. 175 and-he requested-ACC “While he was sought”
It is possible that speakers analyzed these two structures, base nominal sentences and similar uses of the circumstantial adverbs, as the same. Such a reanalysis could have contributed to the generalizing of the accusative to all predicates. One is reminded of the grammatical debates mentioned above. The Baṣrans held that any example of accusative predicates were actually instances of ḥāls, whereas the Kufans allowed for their analysis as accusative predicates. So while it is impossible to determine what process led to marking the predicate accusative, there are antecedents and plausible analogies that can explain such a development without appealing to hypercorrection.
Marking existentials accusative is attested in a few Semitic languages, like Gəʿəz and, irregularly, in Hebrew. I argued that a number of phenomena in CA wherein a single noun in the accusative developed into exhortations can be understood as developing from existentials. The MA examples with kāna and laysa might have involved a reanalysis of the constituents of those clauses, but such developments have also occurred in modern dialects,75 so again there is no need to appeal to hypercorrection.
In both JA and ChA, subjects of passive verbs, which are grammatically patients, are occasionally marked accusative. As we saw, though unusual, there are parallels that developed in other Semitic languages, such as Aramaic, Hebrew and Gəʿəz. In those languages, appeal has been made to analogies based on doubly transitive verbs, which
75 For example: kān fīh ʿindī sayyārah “I had a car,” where kān stands before the clause and places the whole clause in the past tense. There is no agreement with the feminine singular sayyārh “car.” If accusative marking was still present in the dialects, we might expect sayyārah to be marked accusative. This is strongly suggested by sentences in the dialects like kān ʿindī iyyāh “I had it.” 176 even in the passive still assign the accusative to an object: ʾaʿṭā al-kātiba kitāba-hū “He gave the author his book” > ʾuʿṭiya al-kātibu kitāba-hū “the author was given his book.”
Another possible impetus is the reanalysis of specifying adjectives that are the logical agents of passive verbs. We saw this in chapter 2 with constructions in Safaitic like rġmn mny and qtln ʾl ḥwlt, where the subjects of the passive participles rġm and qtln are explicit, and the agent, mny, the deified personification of fate, is most likely marked accusative. The basis of such a reinterpretation can be seen in examples like:
191) Q72.8 وأﻧّﺎ ﻟﻤﺴﻨﺎ اﻟﺴﻤﺎء ﻓﻮﺟﺪﻧﺎھﺎ ﻣﻠﺌﺖ ﺣﺮﺳﺎ ﺷﺪﯾﺪا وﺷﮭﺒﺎ wa-ʾannā lamas-nā al-samāʾa fa-waǧadnā-hā muliʾat and-we touch.PERF.1cp DEF-heavens and-find-PERF-1cp-3fs filled-PERF-3fs
ḥarasan šadīdan wa-šuhuban guards-AC powerful-ACC and-flames-ACC “And we have sought to reach heaven but found it filled with powerful guards and burning flames”
In such sentences, speakers might have begun to interpret the specifying accusative as the agent of the verb: filled with powerful guards > filled by powerful guards.76 Finally, as with the examples in Hebrew, it is quite possible that subjects of passive verbs were still inherently interpreted as objects, and thus accusative marking remained natural.
Accusative marking for predicates, existentials, passive and active intransitive verbs, the distribution attested in JA, looks almost like ergative alignment, though the fact
76 I thank Ahmad Al-Jallad for this excellent suggestion. 177 that the accusative marks nominal predicates is inconsistent with ergative alignment.77
However, the function of the accusative in ChA marking subjects of active transitive verbs does not fit with the notion that case alignment in these MA texts represents a shift in alignment from accusative to ergative. Rather, it seems that, like in late Biblical
Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew, the direct object marker had become a marker of verbal subjects and nominal predicates.78
The extension of the accusative to mark subjects of active transitive verbs might have been a natural one if agents of passive verbs were, in some cases, marked accusative. Conversely, the relatively frequent occurrence of the accusative marking these subjects in enumerations could hold a clue. First, use of the comitative waw (Arabic waw al-maʿiyyah) occurs even in CA with a following accusative, as it does in a number of contemporary Arabic dialects.79 This could explain the frequent occurrence of the accusative with enumerations. Another possible impetus behind this development is that case assignment was confused in strings of more than one subject.80 This occurs in
English, for example, in cases like “Tom and me wrote the book,” whereas one would normally not say *“me wrote the book.” Such accusative marking of subjects is actually quite frequently attested in Arabic as well, as in Jordanian Arabic:
77 For a clear discussion of ergativity, and common pathways of development from accusative to ergative alignment, see Coghill 2016: §2.2. 78 Though one difference worth mentioning between the Hebrew and ChA forms is that, in the former, the direct object marker ʾeṯ continued to mark direct objects in these phases of the language (and does in Modern Hebrew as well), whereas this is to my knowledge not the case in JA and ChA. 79 In many Gulf dialects, for example, “with them” is expressed by wiyyā + pronoun (< *wa ʾiyyā + pronoun) (wiyyāhum “with them”) instead of by maʿ + pronoun (Holes 2006: 249). 80 I thank Thomas Leddy-Cecere for pointing this parallel out to me. 178 192) katabnā li-ktāb ʾanā wiyyāhum81 wrote.PERF.1cp DEF-book I-NOM and-them-ACC “We wrote the book, I and they”
Again, it is impossible to tell precisely how the current distribution developed, but several possibilities emerge from a close reading of the texts, and by considering possibilities that allow for Arabic to look different from the modern dialects and CA.
So far I have attempted to set the evidence from MA into a broader perspective and show that most, if not all, of the so-called hyper-corrective features can be understood as natural developments instead. In addition to the naturalness of the developments proposed above, I believe another point in favor of the interpretation offered here deserves attention. The early ChA texts which Blau treats in his grammar
(ASP) date to the 9th and 10th centuries CE and consist overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, of translations of texts from Greek, including biblical texts. In the traditional framework within which MA has been treated, namely that it represents failed attempts at writing CA, the assumption is that scribes who are able to translate texts from Koiné and
Classical Greek, which possesses a case system, into Arabic are unable to comprehend the comparatively simple and redundant case system of CA. This is, for example, a major component of the traditional Arabic historiography, and is championed by scholars like
Blau (1977) and Versteegh (1984), among others. This seems a priori unlikely, and, I believe exposes another basic assumption, namely that the CA case system was too difficult for non-natives to learn. Further, regarding ChA for example, produced in
81 In this instance, however, wiyyāhum cannot be explained as an instance of the comitative waw as wiyyā “with” is not otherwise attested in Jordanian Arabic. 179 southern Palestine in the 9th and 10th centuries, given that Arabic grammatical work was only in its infancy (Owens 1990), and the extent of CA outside of S. Iraq unknown, I cannot see how CA, as prescribed by the grammarians, can continue to be the default literary target in the earliest Islamic centuries.
If one insists on interpreting the accusative marking in these MA texts as examples of hypercorrections, then I would argue there is simpler principle to which one can appeal. Whereas Blau treats each example individually and attempts to identify the potential source of confusion for the author (cf. JA 182-3 et passim). However, if hypercorrection is indeed the cause, it would be more economical to posit a single tendency: nouns at the end of sentences tend to be marked accusative. This principle would have the advantage of explaining predicate marking since predicates tend to come later in the sentence, as well as existentials, which typically follow prepositional phrases in the examples discussed above. Additionally, it would explain why, in cases of enumeration, non-initial nouns tend to be marked accusative. This explanation would not, however, meaningfully account for the examples, like tuqraʾ fuṣūlan “the books were read,” where the only noun is marked accusative. For this reason, along with the discussion above, I continue to argue that hypercorrection is unlikely. This principle, of non-initial nouns marked accusative, would assume again that scribes trained in the use of Arabic script, and capable of translating texts from Greek to Arabic, were nevertheless completely clueless as to the function of the tanwīn alif.
180 4.4 CONCLUSIONS Case in MA texts is manifested in one of three ways. First, most of the literature published so far has no morphosyntactic case marking. In those varieties, as in the modern dialects, case distinction is overtly expressed in a morphological distinction for the pronouns only. Second, some MA literature attests, insofar as the script reveals, a
CA-like case distribution, though for the most part it is optional. As mentioned in chapter
3, this optionality is a possible explanation for certain patterns in the QCT, and thus consistent with data from earlier periods. Third, we have seen that the functions of the tanwīn alif, etymologically the accusative case, are primarily to mark nominal predicates, existentials, and, less commonly, to mark subjects of verbs. In JA, the only examples I have found are subjects of passive, or active intransitive verbs. In ChA, tanwīn alif has been extended to mark subjects of transitive verbs as well, though often in enumerations.
I noted the degree to which the distribution in MA overlaps with an ergative alignment, though this overlap is only partial and thus the alignment in MA cannot be considered ergative. In MA in general, adverbs are marked with tanwīn alif.
The development of the third pattern, which is so far only attested in MA, is unclear and could be the result of any number of natural developments. Unlike all previous scholarship, I have argued that the system is too consistent, and its development natural enough on its own, for us to assume that the authors tried, and failed, to write proper CA. Partial case marking is attested already well before the advent of Islam, and is expressed also in the QCT. Further, the assumption that authors, especially non-Muslims, would have attempted to write in CA is probably anachronistic. There were undoubtedly
181 stylizations that became part of a loose literary tradition, which makes it unlikely that JA or ChA can be identified with spoken dialects in general. They could just as easily have represented multiple traditions that were in contact to some extent. Nevertheless, there is no reason to assume a complete difference either, and so the ergative-like case system attested in JA might have reflected living use at some point. The relationship between the data examined above, and the suffix in/an found in JA, as well as many modern dialects, is important to establish and will constitute the topic of the next chapter.
182 CHAPTER 5: DIALECTAL TANWĪN
5.1 INTRODUCTION As mentioned previously, a morpheme, typically realized as either -in or -an, occurs suffixed to a morphologically indefinite noun in a number of different Arabic dialects. While most scholarly discussions of this particular morpheme revolve around its occurrence and function in modern dialects, it is in fact attested historically in Andalusian
Arabic (cf. Corriente 2013), as well as in Judaeo-Arabic texts, with attestations dating at least as early as 10th CE.82 Synchronically, already in the earliest texts, and by and large also true for the modern dialects, the morpheme is suffixed to nouns followed by some type of adnominal adjective or clause: bint-in zēna “a pretty girl” (Holes 2016: 131).
Most scholars have held that the morpheme is made up of a frozen case vowel and a n, originally tanwīn occurring on syntactically unbound nouns (Fischer and Jastrow 1980:
96). This morpheme is usually termed ‘dialectal tanwīn’ (henceforth DT) in current scholarly discussions.83 In terms of the underlying case that DT represents, most, following Blau (JA: 247), have assumed that it originated in the accusative singular *an,
82 These examples are in texts written in non-Arabic scripts, whether Andalusi (often in Latin script) and Judaeo-Arabic (written almost always in Hebrew script). In Arabic, it would typically be written either with the suffixed alif, or using tanwīn, although it is not reported as often in MA texts written in Arabic. 83 In fact most scholars in the Arabist tradition describe this as a marker of indefiniteness (cf. Fischer 2002: §141; Fischer and Jastrow 1980: §7.2.3, p. 96). While most instances of nunation do in fact occur on semantically indefinite nouns, its occurrence on personal names (e.g., Muḥammadun) reveal that it is not, strictly speaking, a marker of indefiniteness. Rather, nasalization in Semitic was originally a marker of the unbound (i.e. not construct) state (Huehnergard 2004: §3.3.2.1, pp. 146-7). Definiteness and indefiniteness were not morphologically marked in Semitic. Thus, in Akkadian, which never developed a definite article, the noun šarrum can mean either “a king” or “the king” depending on context (Huehnergard and Woods 2004: §4.1.1, p. 242). Since the definite article is not reconstructible to proto-Arabic (it is totally absent in Ḥismaic), and developed and spread in Central Semitic (see Pat-El 2009), it is not quite clear why tanwīn was felt to be incompatible with morphological definiteness. Ahmad Al-Jallad (p.c.) has suggested that the article might have entered Arabic via a dialect which had lost tanwīn, but which still had case vowels. In that case, speakers of dialects which still had tanwīn might have interpreted the use of the article on a word like al-baytu “the house” as indicating that the article was used with construct, i.e., non-nunated, forms. 183 regardless of its synchronic realization. Others, such as Behnstedt (1987; 2016) have identified the case based on its synchronic realization: any in in such a reconstruction must go back to the genitive singular, any an to the accusative, etc. Finally, a minority of scholars has recently questioned such an identification on the basis that the morpheme does not synchronically mark case, nor can it be reconstructed as having done so without relying on CA. Instead, these scholars have simply reconstructed it as a connecting morpheme *Vn (Owens 2006: 106; Holes 2011).
The form and distribution of the morpheme is largely identical across time and space, which strongly suggests a shared development. Details of its distribution, however, leave open the possibility of an origin other than tanwīn. In the vast majority of dialects, it occurs primarily suffixed to a noun followed by an attributive adjective. Other, more limited uses, such as when suffixed to a noun followed by a verbal or prepositional phrase functioning adjectivally, could be extensions of the basic N-vn + Adj structure.
Explanations that derive the morpheme from etymological tanwīn have not accounted sufficiently for the variation in both form and distribution.
In this chapter, I will first review the data from all relevant dialects, and then put forward two possible explanations of the diachronic development of this morpheme. On the one hand, I will argue that the peculiar distribution of the morpheme can be plausibly interpreted as indicating an origin in the deictic particle *han, etymologically identical to the definite article, rather than in the traditionally assumed tanwīn. This proposal, based on the syntactic reconstruction put forward in Pat-El (2009), is that the particle in the
184 form ʾan84, originally used to mark an attributive adjective following the noun, was reinterpreted as a suffix on the preceding noun. On the other hand, there are sensible arguments to be made in favor of the traditional identification of the morpheme as a remnant of a case vowel + tanwīn. If this is the case, however, I will argue that, rather than all forms going back to the accusative singular (per Blau), the morpheme rather represents a merger of the formerly distinct case vowels. I will attempt to connect such a development to other attested changes in both modern and pre-modern Arabic dialects.
5.2 DATA DT is attested in both historical and contemporary data. In this section, I will review the attested functions of DT, which, as noted above, are remarkably similar across time and space. The two possible diachronic scenarios for its development will be discussed in the following two sections (5.3 and 5.4). The primary functions of DT in historical and contemporary varieties are all based on its suffixation to a noun followed by some type of adnominal attribute. This attribute takes the form of an attributive adjective, prepositional phrase or a verbal clause. Other, more restricted functions will be discussed subsequently.
84 This deictic particle can be safely reconstructed with an initial laryngeal h, and forms with h are attested not only in Safaitic (Al-Jallad 2015b: §4.8), but also in modern dialects, cf. Jordanian hal-bēt “this house (here).” The form ʾan, with a glottal stop, is also attested in Safaitic as one form of the article, as well as in CA as the subordinating particle ʾan followed by a verb in the subjunctive (Fischer 2002: §344, p. 181). The change from h > ʾ is common in West Semitic (see Al-Jallad 2015c; cf. Hebrew hifʿīl but Arabic form IV ʾafʿala. 185 5.2.1 N-Vn + Adj85 By far the most common context in which DT occurs in every available corpus is suffixed to a noun followed by an adnominal attributive adjective (N-Vn + Adj):
JA (Blau JA: 173–4) In Classical JA, a few examples, primarily from one text (High Ways), DT is written by means of the two kasras from Arabic orthography.
1) (High Ways 260.7) לם ידהבהא אכתסאבٍ עלמי ﻟﻢ ﯾﺬھﺒﮭﺎ اﻛﺘﺴﺎ ٍب ﻋﻠﻤﻲ lam yaḏhab-hā iktisāb-in ʿilmī and-NEG go-JUSS-3ms-PRON.3fs acquisition-DT scientific “And (an ignorance of) the acquisition of knowledge has not left it”
2) (High Ways ii. 78.16-17) מן רדאילً כלקיה ומעאציً שרעיה ﻣﻦ رداﯾ ًﻞ ﺧﻠﻘﯿﺔ وﻣﻌﺎﺻ ًﻲ ﺷﺮﻋﯿﺔ min radāyil-an ẖalqiyyah wa-maʿāṣiyyan šarʿiyyah From vices-DT character and-sins-DT legal “From character vices and sins against the law”
/in/ or /an/ אןElsewhere in the Classical JA period, DT was written as a separate word 86
(Blau JA 175-6):
3) (RMBM 28.14) אלי בלאד אן בעידה اﻟﻰ ﺑﻼد ان ﺑﻌﯿﺪه ʾilā bilād an baʿīdah
85 In this dissertation I have chosen to present the data according to the type of attribute following the DT- marked noun, common among dialectologists and widespread in the grammars cited here. However, it is in many ways unfortunate as it obscures the fact that the function is the same, that of marking nouns followed by an attribute. 86 The significance of this development will be discussed in the sections below. 186 to countries DT far off "To far away countries”
4) (Eldad Had-Dânî p.40, par. 9) סמך אן כתיר...אטאיר אן כבירה ﺳﻤﻚ ان ﻛﺜﯿﺮ...اطﺎﯾﺮ ان ﻛﺒﯿﺮه samak an kaṯīr...ʾaṭāyir an kabīrah fish DT many...birds DT large “Many fish...large birds”
The same practice of writing the DT as a separate word is ubiquitous in the correspondence from Egypt and N. Africa found in the Cairo Geniza, dating from the
11th - 19th centuries CE. The following examples are taken from Wagner’s (2010) comprehensive study of these letters (pp. 178-9):
5) (T-S 13J17.3/9) ונחן תחת חאל אן עצים وﻧﺤﻦ ﺗﺤﺖ ﺣﺎل ان ﻋﻈﯿﻢ wa-naḥnu taḥt ḥāl an ʿaẓīm and-we under situation DT terrible “While we (were) in a terrible state”
6) (T-S 8.18/V.9f - 11th century Egypt) נביע מנה שי אן אכר ﻧﺒﯿﻊ ﻣﻨﮫ ﺷﻲ ان اﺧﺮ nabīʿ min-hu šay an āẖar buy-IMPF-1cp. from-him thing DT other “We will buy another thing from him”
7) (AIU VII 93/8 - 19th century CE Morocco) ועדבו פינא עדאב אן שדיד وﻋﺬﺑﻮ ﻓﯿﻨﺎ ﻋﺬاب ان ﺷﺪﯾﺪ wa-ʿaḏḏabū fī-nā ʿiḏāb an šadīd and-torture-PERF-3mp in-us torture DT great “They punished us a great punishment” 187
The pattern N-Vn + Adj, is the only use of DT that Corriente lists for Andalusian Arabic, dating from the 9th century CE (examples from Corriente 2013: §3.1.1.1.1):
Andalusi Arabic 8) ʿayš-an ḍank life-DT miserable “Miserable life”
9) maṣāyiban ʿiẓām disgraces-DT great “Great disgraces”
10) (Ibn Quzman, 12th century, apud Ferrando forthcoming: 1) wajhan malīḥ wa-šarrāban ʾaṣfar face-DT nice and-drink-DT yellow “A beautiful face and a golden drink”
This function of DT is also most common across the contemporary Arabic-speaking world. While especially concentrated in the Arabian peninsula, it is also attested in
Mesopotamia, the Levant, and sub-Saharan Africa:
Afghanistan Arabic (Ingham 2003: 30) 11) fad gapp-in maḥqūl one speech-DT reasonable “Reasonable words”
12) zaġīrid darvīš small-DT dervish “A dervish child”
Uzbekistan Arabic (Zimmerman 2009: 621-2) 13) bayt-in kabīr house-DT big 188 “A big house”
14) mū-hin aḥmar water-DT red “Golden water”
Bahraini Baḥarna Arabic (Holes 2016: 131-2) 15) bint-in zēna girl-DT beautiful “A beautiful girl”
16) may-in bārda water-DT cold “Cold water”
Omani Arabic (Holes 1996: 47-8) 17) in kān nāqt-in zēna if to.be-PERF-3ms female camel-DT good “If it’s a good female camel”
18) u iḏa kān ksūr-in kaṯīra and if to.be-PERF-3ms broken bones many “And if many bones are broken”
Najdi Arabic (Ingham 1994: 48) 19) jā-na ḥarbiyy-in ṭuwīl come-PERF-3ms-ACC 1cp Ḥarbī tall “There came to us a tall Ḥarbi”
20) beet-in kibīr house-DT large “A large house”
Dialects of SE Najdi, such as the Āl Murra, suffix the DT to the attributive adjective as well (Ingham 1986: 280):
189 21) rēna bʿīr-in ʿōd-in see.PERF-1cp male camel-DT large-DT “We saw a large male camel”
Sudanese Arabic (Owens and Hassan 2009: 711-2) 22) rājil abu watīr-an hamra man father of car-DT red “A man with a red car”
23) rajl-an šūm man-DT nasty “A nasty man”
SW Saudi Arabia (Bal-Qarn - Prochazka 1988: 48) 24) šarēt sayyārat-in yadīdeh buy.PERF.1cs car-DT new “I have bought a new car”
25) yabal-in aswad mountains-DT black “Black mountains”
A few SW Saudi dialects, most notably that of Rijal Almaʾ, pattern with SE Najdi dialects (see ex. 21 above), and attach the DT to the following attributive adjective as well (Asiri 2008: 72):
26) tahnah bint-in ṭayyibat-in That girl-DT good-DT “That is a good girl”
5.2.2 N-Vn + Attributive Verbal Clause Another syntactic function that DT marks is a noun followed by an attributive verbal clause. Although this pattern is decidedly less common across the contemporary
190 dialects than N + Adj, it is nevertheless attested both historically, in JA, as well as in contemporary dialects.
Judaeo-Arabic (exs. 27 & 28 from Blau JA: 175; exs. 29 & 30 from Wagner 2010: 178-9) 27) (Saadia Gaon Tarbiz 25, 325.27) שאהד אן יחכי ﺷﺎھﺪ ان ﯾﺤﻜﻲ šāhid an yaḥkī witness DT tell-IMPF-3ms “A witness who is telling”
28) (Isaac Alfasi, Harkavy 63.15) רגל אן ירתציה رﺟﻞ ان ﻻ ﯾﺮﺗﻀﯿﮫ rajul an lā yartaḍīh man DT not be.satisfied-IMPF-3ms-SUFF 3ms “A man with whom he will not be pleased”
29) (T-S NS 308.119/8; 11th century CE Egyptian) ומא הי שי אן תכתלט מע כתאנך وﻣﺎ ھﻲ ﺷﻲ ان ﺗﺨﺘﻠﻂ ﻣﻊ ﻛﺘﺎﻧﻚ wa-mā hī šay an taẖtaliṭ maʿ kitān-ak and-not it thing DT be.mixed-IMPF-3fs with flax-your “It is not a thing that could be confused with your flax”
30) (GW XXVIII/1; 15th/16th century CE Egyptian) ואכדך מעי לכל בית אן ארוח ליה وأﺧﺬك ﻣﻌﻲ ﻟﻜﻞ ﺑﯿﺖ ان اروح ﻟﯿﮫ wa-ʾāẖuḏ-ak maʿī li-kull bayt an ʾarūḥ and-take-IMPF-1cs-SUFF 2ms with-me to-every house DT go-IMPF-1cs lēh to-it “I will take you with me to every house I go into”
Andalusi Arabic (Ibn Quzman - Ferrando forthcoming: 9) 31) šufayfāt-an yaṭūl fī-hā l-iʿtibār 191 Small lips-DT be.long-IMPF-3ms in it DEF-pondering “Small lips which would be pondered long”
32) ʾilā yawm-an yulqā ʿalayya t-turāb Until day-DT be.thrown-IMPF-3ms upon me DEF-dust “Until the day they cover me with earth”
Bahraini Arabic (Holes 2016: 132) 33) arāḍ-in bayyaʿ-ha lands-DT sell-PERF-3ms-SUFF 3fs “Lands which he sold”
Najdi Arabic (Ingham 1996: 52) 34) awwal šiggit-in šift-aha First flat-DT see.PERF-1cs-SUFF 3fs “The first flat I have seen”
35) rāʿi šiggit-in kallam-t-ih Owner flat-DT talk-PERF-1cs-SUFF 3ms “The owner of a flat I have spoken to”
36) (Ingham 1982: 55) kilmit-in gāl-ō-hā-lī word-DT say.IMPF 3mp-SUFF 3fs-to me “A word which they said to me”
Afghanistan Arabic (Ingham 2006: 34) 37) darwīš-in šuft Dervish-DT see.PERF-1cs “I saw a dervish” (or “A dervish whom I saw”)
38) wasīr-in kō ʿindu minister-DT to.be-PERF-3ms at him “He had a wazīr (minister)” (or “a wazīr whom he had”)
192 5.2.3 N-Vn + Prepositional Phrase The final usage attested in both historical and contemporary Arabic varieties is the use of DT to mark a noun modified by an attributive prepositional phrase.
Judaeo-Arabic (ex. 39 from Blau JA: 175; exs. 40 & 41 from Wagner 2010: 39) לא תעבדון רב אן סוואי ﻻ ﺗﻌﺒﺪون رب ان ﺳﻮاي lā taʿbudūn rabb an siwāya NOT worship.IMPF.2mp lord DT except me “Do not worship another God beside me”
40) (T-S 8J39.12/rm.16f) לאן מא יקע שי אן פיה כיר פי אלצוק ﻻن ﻣﺎ ﯾﻘﻊ ﺷﻲ ان ﻓﯿﮫ ﺧﯿﺮ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺼﻮق liʾan mā yaqaʿ šay an fī-h ẖayr fī al-ṣūq because not occur-IMPF-3ms thing DT in it good in DEF-market “Because there is nothing of any good (quality) to be found in the market”
41) (T-S 18J3.15/11) אעלם כל כיר אן אנא פיה اﻋﻠﻢ ﻛﻞ ﺧﯿﺮ ان اﻧﺎ ﻓﯿﮫ ʾaʿlam kull ẖayr an ʾana fī-h “I know all good (fortune) that I have”
NE Najdi (Ingham 1982: 55) 42) jizʾ-in min-h part-DT from it “A part of it”
43) rifīź-in li friend-DT to me “A friend of mine”
Bahraini Baḥārna Arabic (Holes 2016: 132) 44) gitīʿ-in min il-hōš herd-DT from DEF-goats 193 “A herd of goats”
45) marr-in lik marr-in ʿalēk time-DT for-you time-DT against you “Sometimes (life’s) for you, sometimes against you”
Omani Arabic (Holes 1995: 48) 46) kill bēt-in ʿan rabʿa msāfa šway Each house-DT from its neighbor distance bit “Each household which is some distance from its neighbor”
5.2.4 Other Syntactic Functions Whereas the above functions are widely attested across the Arabic-speaking world, a number of dialects from the Arabian Peninsula attest limited use of DT in other contexts as well. Often, these functions are peculiar to a particular dialect or dialect group. In Bahraini, DT is suffixed to the quantifier kill “each, every; all” as well as a few other distributive expressions (examples from Holes 2011; 2016: 132-3):
47) iylisaw kill-in maḥallah sit-PERF-3mp each-DT his place “They sat down, each in his place”
48) kill-in ya yifṭar all-DT come-PERF-3ms break.fast-IMP-3ms “All who passed by (were given food to) break their fast”
49) nās-in rāḥaw, nās-in inzalaw people-DT go.PERF-3mp people-DT stay.PERF-3mp “Some people left, some people stayed”
194 In a few dialects, including Najdi and Andalusi, DT is suffixed to participles used verbally. In Najdi varieties, DT is suffixed to these participles as long as the object is not expressed in a pronominal suffix (Ingham 1996: 49).
Andalusi Arabic (Corriente 2013: §3.1.1.1.1) 50) haléft… cáylen izm allah swear.PERF.2ms say.PART.msg-DT name God “Did you swear...saying: by God...?”
Najdi Arabic (Ingham 1996: 49) 51) ana jāyb-in hāḏa I bring.PART-msg-DT this “I have brought this”
52) ana gāyl-in l-ik I say-PART-msg-DT to you “I have said to you”
The examples presented above represent the overwhelming majority of the published instances of DT, both historical and contemporary. While it is of course possible that DT reflects an original ‘linking morpheme,’ as suggested by Owens and others, I believe there are other possibilities that do not require us to reconstruct an otherwise unattested linking particle. The first possibility is that, per current scholarly consensus, it developed from etymological tanwīn. The second is that it represents development from the deictic particle *han. The first was argued by Blau (JA: 174 ff.), and has been accepted by virtually every other scholar, but has not been re-examined
195 based on subsequently discovered evidence87. The second possibility has never been advanced before, and thus requires significant explanation. In the following two sections,
I will explore these two possibilities in turn.
5.3 POSSIBILITY ONE – ETYMOLOGICAL TANWĪN DT is attested in a minority of dialects marking functions other than those just reviewed. These functions are primarily adverbial, and thus provide a parallel to proto-
Arabic adverbial accusative tanwīn an (see chapter 1). It is thus certainly reasonable to posit a connection between DT, in this case at least, and the PA accusative tanwīn.
Further, as we shall see, the distribution of Tihāma DT is most plausibly connected with etymological tanwīn. After reviewing these functions, I will address the challenges of historical reconstruction, and propose a modification to the traditional scenario accounting for the development from PA to the modern dialects. If all instances of DT ultimately descend from PA tanwīn, Blau’s reconstruction nevertheless does not account for the data in the most economical manner.
5.3.1 Tihāma DT The dialects of the Tihāmah are located in SW Saudi Arabia and NW and western
Yemen (on which, see Behnstedt 2016; Prochazka 1988). DT in this region exhibits a completely different distribution than in the dialects in the areas just reviewed. Typically,
87 This comment deserves some qualification. Owens (2006: 104-6) offers a critique based on a wider range of modern dialects than were available to Blau when he originally wrote his grammar in 1965. However, he does not critique Blau’s position as much as he rejects it based on the assumption that for any feature to be connected with another attested historically, the distribution and function of the former and latter should be basically the same. I do not share this assumption, and will argue below (section 5.4) that, if DT does indeed derive from etymological tanwīn, it is not terribly difficult to arrive at the present distribution from the historically attested data. 196 in those dialects that attest it, DT is suffixed to any morphologically indefinite noun. In some dialects, the form is identical to DT elsewhere, namely in.
53) im-Maṯṯ̣ạ h (Behnstedt 1987: 209) staʿdin “a ḏurah stalk” ʿaṯṃ in “bones” ṯịʿlin “rib” ṯaỵ fin “guest”
DT does not occur in many of these dialects in pausal position (Behnstedt 2016: 65):
54) Jabal Fayfāʾ staʿdin but staʿdeh# ṯaỵ fin but ṯaỵ f #
A number of dialects in the coastal Tihāma region of modern Yemen attest a final u (or
ū), lacking final n, while a smaller number of dialects in that same region show un, all instead of final in (Behnstedt 2016: 64-6):
55) Zabid baytu “house” = Mīdi baytun
Unfortunately, as Behnstedt (2016: 66) acknowledges, the nature of the data collection does not allow a complete picture of the pausal distribution in many of these un/u dialects. A few dialects for which text-length data is available show an interesting and revealing distribution - non-pausal in but pausal u (or ū):
56) Bal-Qarn (Prochazka 1988: 47-9) Rēt rāyīl-u but rēt rāyīl-in fim-ḥugnah see-PERF-1cs men-DT see-PERF-1cs men-DT in DEF-field “I saw men” “I saw men in the field”
197 57) bēt-in aḥmaru house-DT red “A red house”
The same distribution is apparently attested in the dialects of ar-Rāyṯ and the Banī Malik on the Saudi side of the Saudi-Yemeni border, as well as in the dialect of the Banī
ʿAbādil (Behnstedt 2016: 65).
As discussed in chapter 2, and as noted by Blau (2006:29), in many of the dialects of this region in which DT occurs, it is often absent on a number of nominal patterns that were diptotic in CA, including the comparative patterns *ʾafʿal and *faʿlay, and the *ān suffix. It is also frequently absent on the feminine singular ending *at (tāʾ marbūṭa), and occasionally the broken plural patterns *faʿālil, *faʿālīl, and fuʿalāʾ (among others).
Thus:
58) Minabbih (Behnstedt 2016: 65) Masc.sg. ʾastnaġ (=ʾaṣnaǧ) “deaf,” but Plu. stunǧin ʾabyaṯ ̣“white” but bīṯịn ʾastfar “yellow” but stufrin
59) im-Maṯṯ̣ạ h (Behnstedt 1987: 209) marwah (not **marwat-in) “firestone” but marawāt-in “firestones” sanah (not *sanat-in) “year”
This morphological distribution is unlike DT in the rest of the dialects we reviewed above, which, as mentioned, occurs consistently on the feminine singular *at, but also on the broken and sound masculine plural patterns (cf. examples above).
However, there is a fair amount of inconsistency concerning the distribution of
DT on originally diptotic patterns:
198 On fuʿalāʾ
60) Abha (al-Azraqi 1998: 73) fugarann masākīn poor-DT poor They are poor [and] poor”
On ʾafʿal
61) ʾabyaḍin mġabbir white-DT dusty “Dusty white”
On faʿālīl
62) im-Maṯṯ̣ạ h (Behnstedt 1987: 209) marāgīm-in “letters” mafātīḥ-in “keys” maṣāyb-in “disasters”
On *at
63) Abha (al-Azraqi 1998: 73) manti marat-in sanʿah NOT-you-fsg. woman-DT good “You are not a good woman”
64) Bal-Qarn (Prochazka 1988: 48) sayyārt-in yadīdeh/yadīdtin car-DT new / new-DT “A new car”
65) Jabal Rāziḥ (Asiri 2008: 73) ana rayt ibrat-in šaradan I see-PERF-1cs. girl-DT run.away-PERF-3fs “I saw a girl running away”
199 Despite the dearth of data, and the almost complete lack of complete texts, we can nevertheless see from this partial picture several general trends. Pausal forms are noted in only a few dialects, though admittedly this might be a result of elicitation techniques. In
SW Saudi Arabia, we noted the existence of a few dialects in which non-pausally in occurs, while pausally u (or perhaps ū) occurs (i.e., Bal-Qarn; Prochazka 1988).
Additionally, DT often does not occur on originally diptotic nouns, which here includes the feminine ending *at88, but this is not consistent across the dialects, nor always within the same dialect. Importantly, few of the functions attested in the rest of the dialects that attest DT are attested in the Tihāmah dialects.
Table 13: Pausal Distribution in Tihāma Arabic Dialects
Dialect Non-Pausal Pausal
Bal-Qarn & Banī ʿAbādil bēt-in bēt-u
Zabīd bēt-u bēt-u
Mnabbih bēt-in bēt-in
Ḥarāḏ ̣ bēt-un bēt-un
5.3.2 Adverbial Uses of DT As we have seen (chapter 1), the Semitic language family is relatively poor in true adverbials. One of the functions of the accusative case is to mark an adverbial use of a common noun, e.g., Arabic nahāran “during the day.” Reflexes of the accusative are found in certain common phrases in the modern dialects, such as ʾahla wa sahla
88 See Van Putten (forthcoming b) for a discussion of this point in its historical context. He very helpfully highlights that, in addition to the Nabataean evidence that *at was diptotic, it is also the most plausible interpretation of the QCT evidence. 200 “welcome,” etc. In most cases, tanwīn is absent, but a relic of the accusative ā89 is present. In many dialects, forms with tanwīn are also attested, e.g., ʾahlan wa-sahlan alongside ʾahla wa sahla (in, e.g., Ammani Arabic; Al-Wer 2007). In most cases, with no other attestations of DT in a given dialect, the most likely source of the forms with tanwīn is Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). In some dialects which possess DT, however, we find examples of adverbials, some of which are not widely used in MSA. In such instances, it is more plausible that the adverbial DT is derived from etymological tanwīn.
Examples of this adverbial use of DT include:
Najdi Arabic (Ingham 1982: 55)
66) ġaṣb-in force-DT “By force, of necessity”
67) hagwit-in seem-DT “It seems, seemingly”
68) ʿugb-in90 after-DT “Afterwards”
Bahraini Sunni Arabic (Holes 2016: 134)
89 I tend to agree with Blau (JA 174 ff.) et al that the vowel was most likely long, representing the process *an > *ā > a (the last stage representing the synchronic realization, where in the dialects length is non- phonemic word-finally except in a few cases; see below). However, it is also possible that this morpheme is derived ultimately from the terminative *ah (on which, see section 6.2 below), with the final h lost after final short a, which seems to have been lost in most dialects (see 6.3 below). Alternatively, we might imagine that either *an > a, or *ah > a, with the latter frozen on certain words/phrases and not subject to the otherwise fairly regular loss of short final a. 90 Aside from the non-classical realization of adverbial tanwīn, this word also has a non-classical realization of qāf, both strongly pointing in the direction of genuine dialectal form rather than CA borrowing. 201 69) baʿd-an91 after-DT “Then, next”
70) baʿad-an tāli92 iyūn after-DT following-PART come-PERF-3mp “Then they come home”
71) lazm-an necessary-DT “Inevitably, for sure”
72) qabṭ-an gathering-DT “Completely”
73) aqallat-an least-DT “At least”
74) bil-ʿamd-an in-DEF-intention-DT “Intentionally”
91 This form is reminiscent of the more widespread dialectal form baʿdēn “then, after that, afterward.” While it is possible that baʿdēn represents a development from baʿdan, it is not clear what would have caused a lengthening of the vowel, nor the reflex ē, usually corresponding to *ay (or sometimes *īn; see Behnstedt 2016 for examples in Yemeni dialects). Another possibility is that the form goes back to the phrase baʿda ʾānin “after a time.” In this scenario, as the phrase became set, intervocalic ʾ would have been lost *baʿda ʾānin > baʿdānin, as well as tanwīn baʿdānin > baʿdān. If speakers analyzed the ending ān as a dual, especially if dual case inflection was still present, this could have resulted in the dual oblique ēn being extended to this phrase as well. Alternatively, the phrase baʿdēn could represent the use of the dual suffix ēn to signify a more general “few, little,” as it does in other instances as well. In that case, the idea would be “after a little,” which eventually just because “after a period of time.” For an alternative interpretation, see Prochazka (2000). 92 While I think the most probable explanation for the form baʿdan is an adverbial tanwīn (see below), the fact that in most of these examples it is followed by the participle tāli “following,” suggests that one could interpret it as deriving from *baʿda ʾan-tāli “after that which follows,” in which case an here would provide more evidence for scenario one proposed above. 202 Intriguing in the case of these Bahraini examples is the fact that in these adverbial examples, DT is an rather than otherwise attested in, and several show a unique distribution. Holes emphasizes the fact that his informants were uneducated and functionally illiterate, reducing the likelihood of a borrowing from MSA (ibid., 134, n.
65).93 This likelihood is strengthened by the fact that these examples are either unattested in MSA, such as baʿdan and lazman, or ungrammatical, such as aqallatan and bil-
ʿamdan. Of the ungrammatical forms, aqallatan is based on the masculine singular comparative/superlative *ʾaqallv94, which does not take tanwīn in either CA or MSA, and the latter is even more remarkable for the co-occurrence of tanwīn and the article.
The use of DT suffixed to a participle when functioning with verbal semantics, seen especially in Andalusi and Najdi varieties, is more naturally explained as reflecting adverbial accusative an. It seems natural to interpret this use of etymological an as reflecting a generalization of the circumstantial adverbial (Arabic ḥāl) to all verbal uses of the participle. This generalization might have occurred due to the fact that most circumstantial adverbs were active participles (cf. Fischer 2002: §380).
5.3.3 Historical Discussion of Tanwīn There are several related issues that bear on a discussion of tanwīn, and about which there has already been much scholarly discussion over the past century. The first
93 He does, however, suggest (ibid.) that they were perhaps vaguely aware of its use to mark MSA- influenced speech, perhaps leading them to use it. It is not clear to me, however, why speakers who wished to sound more literate would not have generalized an everywhere they produced dialectal in. That they merely produced adverbs, and no other part of speech, with an suggests an independent process. 94 It is not clear why speakers have added at to the base. If one wanted to make an adverb out of the comparative aqall, it would have certainly been possible to simply add an, i.e., **aqallan. Holes does not offer speculation. 203 and most discussed is the topic of what vowel DT represents etymologically. The second is how to reconstruct the development of the actual tanwīn, that is, the final n. In what follows, I will review the major scholarly proposals for the development of case on the singular (and broken plural) forms in Arabic, with a particular focus on their relevance for DT. I will pay special attention to Blau’s explanation of DT in JA and modern dialects (JA 174ff.), as it seems to be the most widely cited today. Following this review,
I will note problems with these approaches, and offer my own thoughts on a solution.
Most scholars connect the modern caseless varieties of Arabic dialects, wherein singular, broken plurals, and feminine singular and plural nouns are not marked with a short case vowel or final tanwīn, with pausal forms of CA. In CA, indefinite nouns ending in nominative un and genitive in have pausal allomorphs that end in Ø: non-pausal pausal baytun/baytin bayt
The accusative singular an, however, loses tanwīn but the a vowel lengthens to ā: non-pausal pausal baytan baytā
Birkeland (1952), for example, argues that the modern dialectal forms originate in pausal forms that were generalized to all contexts, except of course those forms that never had pausal allomorphs, like the feminine singular construct at.
Subsequent scholars have focused on phonetic processes, especially vowel loss, and subsequent analogies to explain the dialectal forms. Cantineau (1953) argued for the following developments:
204 1) Final short high vowels weakened and lost. This affected definite nominative and genitive. Accusative a remained. 2) By analogy with the definite forms, indefinite un and in were dropped. 3) A phonetic change led to definite accusative a and indefinite pausal ā being lost, leaving only indefinite accusative non-pausal an. 4) Based on analogy with all other, now Ø-marked forms, indefinite accusative an was dropped.
Cantineau’s proposal is marred by the fact that he does not connect it with other relevant linguistic features, such as the modal system on the imperfect verb. More importantly, while his account is certainly possible for dialects without DT, it does not account for those that retain it. Finally, although he does not connect an with DT, his fourth step would suggest that accusative an is ultimately the source of any remaining tanwīn, including DT.
The most detailed analysis offered that has specifically engaged CA and modern dialects with DT is that of Blau (1961; ASP; JA). As discussed above in chapter 4, Blau argues that the modern dialects descend from middle arabic dialects, which developed in the newly-established cities outside of the Arabian Peninsula in the early Islamic period.
Blau argues that several factors induced the loss of case and mood endings, including the substrate languages of the conquered peoples, which lacked both, as well as a shift in stress and the generalization of pausal forms. He reconstructs the following steps:
1) Short vowels in open syllables, especially word-finally, weakened and were lost. This happened with high vowels first, so that definite nouns, and all diptotes, lost u and i. 2) Nominative and genitive pausal forms extended to non-pausal forms, leading to un and in > Ø. 3) Word-final long vowels shortened, which led pausal ā (< an) to become a.
205 4) Short a weakened and was lost, which left accusative an as the sole case marker. Case began to break down. 5) Accusative Ø was leveled to context optionally. 6) Oblique case markers on the dual (ayn) and plural (īn) replaced nominative (ān and ūn).
I will discuss the issue of final short vowels in more detail below (chapter 6). Here I will focus on Blau’s claim (JA 188, 247) that DT, in JA, as well as the modern dialects, is ultimately from accusative an. The exception, of course, is those Tihāma dialects that have u(n) instead, which everyone interprets as reflecting the nominative un (Blau 1988:
285; Behnstedt 2016: 64). Blau’s claims are among the few specific arguments that deal with the identity of the vowel of non-Tihāma DT (that is, those forms with in or an), which though widely accepted as originally a case vowel (e.g., Fischer and Jastrow 1980:
120-1; Holes 1990; Diem 1991), does not typically get analyzed on a diachronic basis.
Following Cantineau (1936: 102), Blau argues that all non-Tihāma DT reflects accusative
*an. In the following, I will modify Blau’s proposal, building on its strengths but altering and, at places, eliminating cumbersome elements that reflect Blau’s outdated framework.
Regarding the vowel of DT, which is everywhere outside of the Tihāma either i or a, Blau noted that a fronting of a > i is common in many dialects, and extremely so in the definite article (JA: 188). Thus the specific realization of the vowel is affected in Blau’s view by the phonetic environment and particulars of the dialect. As Owens (2006: 102, n.
24) has further noted, the vowel typically corresponds to the non-phonemic vowels preferred in the particular dialect. I noted above, for example, that Sudanese DT is an, which is in line with the realization of other preformatives, afformatives and epenthetic
206 vowels in those dialects, such as the article al (not il or əl) as well as the fpl verbal suffixes -an (not in) (Owens and Hassan 2009: 711-12). Although it is certainly correct that a and i alternate in many dialects, given the tendency for the vowel to pattern with non-phonemic epenthetic vowels, no conclusions based solely on the realization of the vowel in these dialects can be considered decisive.95
A possible interpretive key is found in two sets of dialects, the dialects of Bal-
Qarn and Banī ʿAbādil in the Tihāma, and the Bahraini Sunni dialects. In the former it will be recalled that DT distribution was divided between pausal and non-pausal position, with pausal forms ending in u and non-pausal forms in: non-pausal pausal bayt-in bayt-u
Behnstedt (2016: 65-6) expresses confusion over why the genitive in would be leveled in non-pausal position, but a nominative u in pause. He suggests the possibility that dialect mixing could have led to the contemporary distribution. I find it unlikely, however, that mixing between dialects could have led to this situation, as no other dialects exhibit nunation in non-pause while possessing a vowel without nunation in pause. It is thus not clear why speakers of a dialect with in in non-pausal position, but with a nouns in pause
Ø-marked, would have stuck the u from another dialect only in pausal position.
Further, Behnstedt’s assumption that in represents genitive because of the surface similarity seems unsafe, especially given the pausal u with no other apparent explanation.
95 An interesting and, as far as I can tell, unique situation obtains in many Najdi dialects, where the feminine plural verbal suffix is typically in, but is an on verbs in certain verbal stems, such as V and VI, as well as internal passives (Ingham 1982: 82). 207 Another possibility is that short vowels in final closed, unstressed position merged. This might have started as a merger of high vowels in that environment, followed by a complete merger:
a. baytun / baytin > bayt-ən or bayt-in, but bayt-an
b. bayt-ən or bayt-in / bayt-an > bayt-ən / bayt-in
Several pieces of evidence suggest that this is likely what happened. In Bahraini
Sunni Arabic, we have seen that normally DT is realized in, but in the few adverbials it is an: may-in bārda “cold water,” but lazman “of necessity.” The latter being elicited from older, functionally illiterate speakers, and otherwise being unattested in contemporary
MSA, strongly suggests a genuine dialectal product. I suggest that this distribution hints at a similar process as attested above; namely, that short high vowels in that final, unstressed position merged, but, in this case, remained distinct from accusative an: *bayt- un / *bayt-in > bayt-in, but *bayt-an > bayt-an. The merger of high vowels in this environment, coupled with their loss on definite nouns, led to the collapse of the case system. However, accusative an, being associated with adverbial expression, continued with that function. This same distribution was reported for central Iraqi fellāḥī poetry
(Meissner 1903: xxvii, §39e). The Najdi situation, where DT, in both adverbial and non- adverbial contexts, is realized in, would seem to represent the end of the process of this vowel merging.
The merging of short high vowels in a variety of contexts is attested across the contemporary Arabic dialects. In Najdi Arabic dialects, for example, the high vowels *i and *u are in complementary distribution, being essentially allophones depending on 208 phonetic environment: i is the usual realization, with u only with emphatics, and, often
(but not always), labials (Ingham 1996: 14): libas “he wore,” and nišad “he asked,” but ṭubar “axe,” and muṭar “rain.” Other dialects in which a similar merger, often partial, is attested include Nigerian and Chad Arabic
(Owens and Hassan 2009: 710); Uzbekistan Arabic (Zimmerman 2009: 614); Bahraini
Arabic (Holes 2006: 243); and Muslim Baghdadi Arabic (Erwin 1963: 17-9). Short high vowel merger is also famously the case in a number of Levantine dialects, like
Damascene, where however the merger is only attested in closed, stressed syllables
(Cowell 1964: 13, 28): by´əktob “he writes,” but byəkt´əb-lak “He writes/will write to you”
ʾ´ənṣol “consul” but ʾənṣ´əl-na “our consul”
In a few dialects, including many of the Mesopotamian qəltu dialects, there has been an almost total merger of high vowels, regardless of phonetic environment. So in Jewish
Baghdadi Arabic, high vowels, which are elided in non-stressed open syllables, are in closed syllables, regardless of stress, realized as /ə/ (Mansour 2006: 234): stressed
*ʾuxt “sister,” and *bint “daughter,” realized ʾəxt and bənt unstressed yəktəb “he writes” (< *yiktub)
It is clear then that high vowel mergers, whether partial/conditioned, or complete, have occurred independently in a number of varieties of Arabic. Indeed, it occurs in a wide range of modern dialects (on which, see Jastrow and Fischer 1980: §3.5, p. 43; see 209 also Owens 2006: §2.4.1, pp. 51-67 for a discussion of this same subject). Further, we have already seen that in Najdi dialects, accusative an is realized as in. Thus the Najdi apparently confirms the merger of final short vowels before tanwīn. The same complete merger is also attested in post-stressed position CVC syllables in some Qəltu dialects of
Mesopotamia, cf. Mardin ḍarabət (< ḍarabat), where the post-stress short a is realized as schwa, which is normally the realization of the merged high vowels *i and *u (Talay
2011: 917).
This reconstruction would seem to be challenged by the vowel distribution in the third and second person plural96 pronominal suffixes, which in many of these same dialects maintain a distinction based on the high vowels u/i. A reconstruction of the proto-Arabic suffixes is generally safe: 3mp *hum(ū) / 3fp *hin(na) and 2mp kum(ū) / 2fp kin(na) (cf. Prochazka 2014). This is the closest context to that in which tanwīn would have occurred. Dialects in which one high vowel was levelled to both forms are attested97
Šawāwī Omani (Eades 2009: 90)
Independent Pronouns Suffixes
3mp/fpl: həmma / hənna him / hin
2mp/fp: ntu / ntən kim / kən
Jabal Fayfāʾ (Alfaifi & Behnstedt 2010: 58 ff.)
96 Singular suffixes, with the synchronic shape -vC(v) are less immediately relevant because historically they were probably still -vCv(:) when this merger occurred, and thus not truly word-final. Nevertheless, a number of dialects reflect a similar process. For the singular suffixes in the context of a discussion of case, see below chapter 6. 97 Discussion of the quality of vowels in the dialects is complicated by the fact that dialectologists often transcribe a particular vowel phonemically and with reference to the CA triad of vowels, transliterated u, i, and a. 210 ʾihim / ʾihinna him / hinna
ʾantim / ʾantinna čim / činna
Most dialects, however, retain a distinction between the masculine and feminine plural forms based at least partly on high vowels:
Sanʿānī (Watson 2009: 110)
Independent Pronouns Suffixes
3mp/fp hum / hin hum / hin
2mpl/fp ʾantū / ʾantin kum / kin
These forms seem to contradict the suggestion that short (high) vowels in closed, unstressed, word-final syllables merged. Several considerations mitigate the significance of these forms, however. First, as is readily observable in most Arabic dialects, the historical relationship between the suffixed forms, which would have occurred word- finally and unstressed, and the independent forms, which would not, is still transparent.
This could have exerted a paradigmatic pressure to retain the distinction in many cases. A perhaps more compelling factor is the fact that masculine suffixes typically end in a m, a bilabial nasal, which may have aided the retention of the back u vowel in a way that final n would not have. In Tigrinya, for example, where, as in Gəʿəz, etymological high vowels *u and *i merged (realized ə), the pronominal suffixes are still distinct: gäza=ʾ(at)om “your house” / gäza=ḵ(atk)um “your (mpl) house” (Voigt 2011: 1158).98
98 I thank Benjamin Suchard for referring me to these examples. 211 Thus in dialects like Najdi, where high vowels have everywhere else merged, it seems most likely that the bilabial is responsible for the retention of u in this context99.
I suggest, then, that non-Tihāma DT represents two stages of development:
1) Merger of high vowels before tanwīn: -un, -in > -ən ~ -in. At this stage, an was still distinct, as in Bahraini, Omani, and rural Iraqi varieties, mentioned above. 2) Merger of high and low-central, etymologically accusative: in/ən/an > ən/in. The realization, as noted above, is generally that of the non- phonemic epenthetic vowel in each dialect. Alternatively, it is also possible that steps one and two occurred as one process in some dialects, and in two in others. In Najdi, Bahriaini and Omani, where tanwīn forms are used adverbially, two steps would seem to be necessary. In others, however, like
99 One other point regarding the pronominal suffixes potentially bears on the present discussion. In a number of dialects of the Arabian peninsula and Syrian desert attest plural pronominal forms with vowels transcribed various as /a/ or /å/: Rwala (Behnstedt 2000: 454)
Independent/Suffixed 3mp hamma / ham 2mp ʾintam / kam Bani Ṣaxar (Palva 1980: 120 ff.) ham / ham intam / kam Šammar (N. Najdi - Behnstedt 2000: 454) hum / ham ʾintam / kam Behnstedt’s explanation for the masculine plural forms with /a/ vowels in the Rwala and Šammari is as follows (ibid., 441): 1) 3mpl of III-y verbs (-aw) generalized to all verbs 2) 3mpl aw > am analogically with 2pl tam / tan verbal forms 3) Pronouns levelled /a/ vowel It should be noted that, in these dialects. /a/ became the vowel in masculine pronouns only. Other dialects in the area have ham / kam without corresponding verbal forms, e.g., Bani Ṣaxar 3pl ow / in and 2pl tow / tin (Palva 1980: 124). Thus the forms with /a/ could have spread areally to these dialects, but they could not have been generated via the analogy that Behnstedt suggests. Analogy is a highly plausible explanation for some cases with /a/. However, at least some could also represent a stage of the fronting of /u/ > /o/ > /å/ > /a/. 212 Sudanese and possibly Andalusi, adverbial forms are (largely frozen) tanwīn-less forms, e.g., marḥaba and not **marḥabin or **marḥaban.
The other variable in the distribution of DT across the board is the position of the word to which it is suffix in the utterance, i.e., whether it is in pausal or non-pausal position. The topic of pause is a complex one, with authors often assuming a self-evident definition, rather than articulating it. In general, pause seems to mean utterance-final position (cf. Watson 2011: §12.1.2). Regarding DT, most discussions highlight that it does not usually occur in pause (cf. Fischer and Jastrow 1980: 121). The nature of the process that resulted in the non-Tihāma distribution of DT was first addressed by Blau
(JA: 188 et passim). He suggested, first, that tanwīn an, that is, indefinite accusative singular, was leveled to every syntactic position. Thus, it first marked any indefinite noun. Then it was lost in pausal position, at the end of what he calls a ‘breath-group,’ but maintained in the middle of a breath group. It was then reanalyzed as a marker of a noun followed by an attribute. I have argued above, however, that DT, realized in or an in most dialects, actually represents a merger of the three short vowels, except in the few cases where, like Bahraini and Iraqi Arabic dialects, a distinction between high vowels (< *i and *u) and the low central vowel (< *a) was maintained. Blau’s syntactic explanation, however, works generally for the non-Tihāma dialects. However, Blau has to posit a second round of pausal rules, which happened after those that account for the CA pausal phenomena, in order to account for the spread of an to all positions, followed by its subsequent loss. While possible of course, this is unnecessary. We can instead imagine that the developments that took place in the dialects behind CA pause also account for 213 these Najdi forms. It is clear that, at some point, case completely broke down, and pausal accusative ā was, except possibly for adverbs and adverbial phrases (like ahla wa sahla
“welcome”), eventually lost.100
The dialects of the Tihāma region, discussed above, attest two different distributions. The most common seems to be simply that anarthrous nouns are marked u, u(n), or in. In most of these dialects, then, there is no pausal/non-pausal distinction. We can then account for their distribution in a quite straightforward manner:
- In dialects with un, the nominative case was generalized, and un became a marker of anarthrous nouns. - In dialects with u, the nominative case was generalized, and nasalization was lost. - In dialects with in, the vowel merger which happened elsewhere also occurred, with the frozen in reanalyzed as a marker of anarthrous nouns.
The dialects of Bal-Qarn and Banī ʿAbādil do have a pausal/non-pausal distribution, however. Specifically, they attest a pausal distribution that is essentially identical to CA poetic pause. CA prose pausal distribution is characterized by the loss of nasalization, with subsequent lengthening of the final vowel:
Pausal Non-Pausal baytun / baytin / baytan baytū / bayī / baytā
The retention of nominative u in pausal position in the Tihāma dialects of Bal-Qarn and
Banī ʿAbādil suggests a similar development. Whether u in these dialects is the result of a lengthening of the final vowel, perhaps via a process of nasalization (i.e., *un > *ũ > *ū), or rather vowel length ceased to be phonemic in that position, is unclear.
100 For a discussion of the tanwīn-less forms with a, see below, chapter 6.2. 214 Blau (2006a) rightly notes that DT in many Tihāma dialects is absent on patterns that in CA are diptotic. That the feminine singular ending *at is also diptotic in many of these dialects (Behnstedt 1987: 220; 2016: 65), which is not the case in CA, but which was the case in the pre-Islamic levant, as well as the Ḥijāz (and quite possibly in the
Qurʾān101), argues further against a direct descent from dialects in the CA tradition. Non-
Tihāma dialects regularly show tanwīn not only on the feminine singular *at, but also other diptotic patterns, even sound masculine plural (cf. muslimīn-in liṭāf “bad
Muslims”). However, the presence of DT on the latter at least could be interpreted as a result of the dissociation of DT from etymological tanwīn and the former’s extension to contexts where the latter would not occur.
Thus in pause, nasalization was lost, but the nominative was generalized, marked by u. In non-pausal form, nasalization was retained, and the merger which happened elsewhere, also occurred. This can be accounted for by positing the following:
1) Pausal *vn > *v(:) In pausal position, nasalization was lost, but the vowel was retained, and potentially lengthened. 2) *un/*in/*an > in Final short vowels in closed syllables in unstressed position merged, as in non- Tihāma varieties. Along with loss of most other final vowels, this quite possibly led to the collapse of case. 3) Pausal nominative u generalized
There is an alternative explanation for the Tihāma data that might account for all the evidence together. Rather than seeing dialects with u(n) and in as reflecting two different processes, we might posit a single process with different contemporary
101 On this, see again Van Putten (forthcoming b). 215 realizations. Instead of reconstructing step 1 above, where pausal *vn > v:, followed by the merger of short vowels before tanwīn to schwa, it is instead possible that step 2 preceded step 1. When n was lost in pausal position, the now-final schwa was lengthened to a high vowel, in this case ū. Those dialects with only in or un might then have simply merged to a high vowel, i in most cases, u in others102:
1) *un/*in/*an > in/un 2) Pausal *vn > v:+high
In such a scenario, rather than un representing a generalized nominative case, we would have instead a rarer subset of dialects in which vowel merger was to the high back vowel.
Given the lack of text corpora for most of the varieties in the Yemeni Tihāma, it is impossible at present to decide between these possibilities.
The non-Tihāma dialects with DT suggest a CA prose-like pausal distribution, as follows:
Pausal Non-Pausal baytun / baytin / baytan bayt# / baytā
That is, nominative and genitive un/in were realized Ø, whereas accusative an > ā. In the non-Tihāma dialects, pausal forms were Ø-marked, which suggests *un/*in > Ø. With the breakdown of the case system, pausal accusative ā was probably restricted to adverbial use at first, which is suggested by its widespread in that function among dialects103, even
102 I am grateful to Marin van Putten for discussing this possibility with me. 103 See below in chapter 6 for a brief discussion of these dialects, which everywhere attest frozen relics with adverbial a (<*ā < *an). I agree with Al-Jallad and Van Putten (forthcoming) that this is most naturally interpreted as a frozen accusative. Interestingly, if this analysis is correct, then it strongly suggests that most modern dialects reflect the same pausal development that CA underwent. The high degree of dialect mixing on the one hand, the fact that it is non-productive on the other, makes it difficult to suss out the historical dialectological implications. 216 those without DT, in frozen adverbial phrases such as marḥaba and ahla wa sahla
“welcome” (Al-Jallad and Van Putten forthcoming). Those dialects for which a sizeable corpus of texts is available, it appears that dialects with DT by and large have adverbs with tanwīn (Cf. Najdi and Bahraini).
Further evidence concerning pause and the loss of case is found in some peninsular varieties, especially the Šammari dialects of north and northeastern Arabia, as well as the Dōsiri dialect of Kuwait. In these dialects, as Marijn van Putten (2017) has shown, the distribution of pausal/non-pausal allomorphs of the feminine singular *at (as well as, for Šammari, feminine plural āt) are essentially as they are in CA. That is, *at is realized at in non-pausal position, whereas it is ah in pausal position. It thus seems that, in Najdi, from which Dōsiri is apparently descended, the *at > ah shift operated before the loss of case/tanwīn, outside of pause, where pausal rules resulted in the loss of case/tawnīn at a prior stage. The following developments account for the distribution in these dialects:
1) *v & *vn > Ø/C_#[Pause] 2) *at > ah/ C_# non-pausal Def at-v & Indef at-vn / pausal both - ah 3) *v > Ø/C_# non-pausal Def at / Indef at-vn / pausal ah 4) *un/in/an > in/C_# The merger of final short vowels in non-stressed position, possibly only in this environment (that is, before /n/)104. These development contributed to breakdown of case. 5) reanalysis of -in as marking noun followed by attribute, which becomes optional
104 Again, it is possible that in many dialects this was a two-stage development, the first with the merger of high vowels, the second with the merger of the high and low-central variant to the quality of the non- phonemic vowel in the dialect. 217 6) Pausal -ah is spread to definite forms (or perhaps another regular sound change: - at > ah occurred) in non-Dōsiri Najdi dialects105
If this reconstruction, or something like it does stand behind the Najdi dialects, especially
Dōsiri, then indefinite pausal forms would have been Ø-marked at an early stage. It is of course possible that the breakdown of case, led possibly by the merger of final short vowels before tanwīn, happened much earlier, so that the case vowel before tanwīn was in or ən before the development of pausal rules. On the other hand, if pausal rules preceded the developments suggested above, it would result in essentially the same distribution. At present, it is impossible to determine the order of these changes relative to the development of pause. While the discussion here has focused on more mechanistic developments and changes to account for the distribution of these features, it is probable, given the nature of its synchronic distribution, that pragmatics could have played a large role in the processes of development that DT went through. We might see a parallel here with the distribution of alif in the MA literature (chapter 4). In both, it seems that salient, non-agentive, and underspecified nouns are less marked synchronically.106 In many processes from full case marking to partial or limited overt marking, we can expect these kinds of significances to play a role in which functions continue to merit overt marking, and which do not.
105 I am very grateful to Marijn van Putten for suggesting this last step as a way of accounting for the Najdi dialects together, with only one stage of development (6) necessary to account for differences between Dōsiri and other Najdi dialects. 106 See e.g., Brustad (2000: §10.3). 218 An important historical point remains to be made. As we saw above in chapters 2 and 3, the dialects attested in the pre-islamic epigraphic record, spanning the Levant and NW
Arabia, attest the virtually complete loss of etymological tanwīn. That so many dialects, from early Andalusi/Spanish Arabic, to JA and contemporary varieties across the Arabic- speaking world attest DT would strongly suggest that, at least by the 8th and 9th centuries
CE, dialects from outside of the Levant and western Arabia spread. This may also explain why the dialects tend to pattern with CA against the dialects attested in the epigraphic record at a number of points.107
Despite the attractiveness of finding a way to plausibly account for all the details of the distribution of DT from one etymon, etymological tanwīn, the distribution of non-
Tihāma DT is still questionable. Specifically, it is difficult to understand why it was only nouns followed by adnominal attributes that retained tanwīn, thus leading to its retention and eventual reanalysis. To reconcile this, one must suggest that the juncture between a noun and following attribute than, say, a noun followed by another noun (e.g., in enumerations). Further, the appeal to pausal distribution does not fully account for the use of DT as a specifier, i.e., “a specific X,” which often occur in pausal position. Thus
Owens was right to seek a possible alternative. Unlike his proposal, however, which is essentially to posit an otherwise unknown morpheme that functions as a linker, I believe there is a plausible etymon that is otherwise attested. In the next section, I will argue for an alternative in the deictic particle *han.
107 E.g., the definite article; the realization of final aya sequences (ay or ē in the epigraphic record, ā in CA and virtually all dialects). 219 5.4 POSSIBILITY TWO: ETYMOLOGICAL *HAN As is clear from a cursory review of the distribution and function of DT in the dialects reviewed above, while DT is homologous with several forms of tanwīn in CA, and shares some aspects of its distribution (only occurring on morphologically indefinite nouns), it is otherwise unlike CA tanwīn. This fact, and the fact that it occurs in such geographically and chronologically widespread dialects with virtually the same distribution, has led several scholars recently to abandon the label ‘dialectal tanwīn’ in favor of a more historically agnostic ‘nominal linker’ (Ferrando forthcoming). Owens
(2006: 104ff.) went further, and argued for the reconstruction of a separate adnominal linker -Vn to what he calls the pre-diasporic period, which he dates to the 7th century CE at the latest. Essentially, Owens simply projects the synchronic function and distribution into the past without exploring explanations connected to otherwise-attested morphemes.
I agree that the widespread nature of the morpheme, and its remarkably consistent function across most dialects, suggests that it is an old feature. Further, it need not necessarily be reconstructed to a reflex of etymological tanwīn. However, rather than positing an otherwise completely unattested morpheme, I suggest that it should be connected to the morpheme ʾan, ultimately from *han, from which the definite article in
Central Semitic developed (Pat-El 2009). In fact, building on Pat-El’s proposals for the development of the DA, I argue that a plausible syntactic motivation for its distribution and function is possible, one that allows us to contextualize DT within broader developments in Arabic.
220 It has long been known that proto-Semitic lacked a definite article (Huehnergard and Rubin 2011: §7.4). Subsequently, definite articles developed in several subgroups of
Semitic languages, seemingly independently at first, spreading areally. Most well-known are the examples in Central Semitic languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. The etymological source of the definite articles in these languages has been a matter of some debate. Most scholars have argued for an original demonstrative pronoun (Lipinski 1997;
Zaborskí 2000 et al). While diverse, these proposals seem to be based ultimately on the conviction that because definite articles developed from demonstratives in Indo-European languages, they must have in Semitic, too.
In a recent article, Pat-El (2009) challenged the long-held assumption that the origin of the definite article in Semitic was a demonstrative pronoun (most recently,
Rubin 2005). Pat-El puts forward strong evidence demonstrating that hā(n) is rather a deictic particle that differs from true Semitic demonstratives in a number of ways (Pat-El
2009: 19-25). Based on relics attested in most Central Semitic languages, she shows that the particle was originally adnominal and attached to nominal attributes, as it is absent from predicate adjectives, including demonstratives (ibid., 40-2). Examples from various
CS languages include:
75) qāne haṭ-ṭōḇ “the good cane” (Biblical Hebrew Jer. 6:20, apud Pat-El 2009: 35). 76) ’lnm hqdšm “these holy gods” (Phoenician, apud ibid.). 77) hānnōn tlāṯā gaḇrīn zaddīkē “these three righteous men” (Syriac, apud ibid., 36).
221 Eventually the particle was added to the preceding noun, which was in apposition with the following adjective. Pat-El suggests that, once this happened, a marked/non- marked relationship was formed between *han-marked nouns and those without.
Ultimately, this relationship was analyzed as distinguishing between definiteness/indefiniteness (ibid., 43). Pat-El identifies numerous examples of the earlier stages of this process, especially her stage 2 (N hā(n)-Adj), in Arabic (examples from
Pat-El 2009: 31-2; 2017: 445-7):
78) dāru l-’āxirati Abode-NOM DEF-other-GEN “The other world” (Classical Arabic).
79) ’arāḍī l-xarājiyyah Lands of DEF-the kharāj-Adj “Lands of the kharāj (i.e., where the kharāj is paid)” (Early Islamic Arabic Papyri).
80) fī ṭarīqat l-mustaqīma in path of DEF-straight-Adj “on the straight path” (Blau 1995)
81) bayt l-maḥruʿ house DEF-burnt ‘The burnt house” (Levantine Arabic).
82) baṭṭīḫ əl-ʾaḫḍar watermelon DEF-green ‘The green watermelon” (Levantine Arabic).
83) sūʾ əl-ʿatīʾ market DEF-old ‘The old marketplace” (Levantine Arabic).
222 84) wied il-kbir valley DEF-big ‘The great valley” (Maltese).
85) ʿīd le-kbīġ holiday DEF-big ‘The great feast (Easter)’ (Christian Baghdadi Arabic)
It is important to note here that while these constructions are synchronically analyzed by speakers as construct phrases even though, as Pat-El notes (2009: 31, n. 39), this is contrary to both their meaning and the syntax of the adjective. Specifically, the adjective always agrees with the head noun in gender and number, which strongly suggests that this pattern was originally appositional, and not construct (ibid., 31, n. 39).
I suggest that, if the etymology of DT is other than tanwīn, the most plausible origin is in the deictic *han, and that its distribution in N-Vn + Adj constructions reflects
Pat-El’s stage 2. Unlike with Arabic ʾal and Hebrew, but as in both Aramaic and the
Ancient South Arabian languages, the han was eventually interpreted as a suffix on the preceding noun, instead of a prefix attached to the attributive adjective. Rubin (2005: 80) proposes the following development to account for the morphology of the Aramaic article: kalbV-han “the dog” > *kalban > kalbã > kalbā (2005: 80). If such a scenario is responsible for DT, then we might imagine a similar development: bayt ʾan-kabīr > baytʾan kabīr > baytan kabīr. The front nature of the suffix in most dialects (in instead of an) matches the trend of fronting the DA vowel (il or əl instead of al) in the dialects.108
108 As Owens (2006: 105-6) rightly notes, the realization of the vowel in DT typically reflects the vowel of the article in a particular dialect. So, as he notes, and as we saw above, Sudanese dialects with DT typically 223 This also would explain the overlap between the many cases of N + al-Adj (noted by
Blau JA 176-7 et passim; and Hopkins 1984: 173) and phrases with N-DT + Adj, where the former occurs even when the phrase is indefinite, paralleling the latter (Hopkins 1984:
173):
ﻟﺰﻣﺎن اﻟﻄﻮﯾﻞ (86 li-zamān iṭ-ṭawīl for-time DEF(?) long “For a long time” (not **”for the long time”)
ﻓﻲ ﺻﻮرة اﻟﺤﺴﻨﺔ (87 fī ṣūrat al-ḥasanah in-form-of DEF(?)-beautiful “In a pretty form” (not **”in the beautiful form”)
Both Blau and Hopkins suggest that an and al are possibly alternating here. While this is probably the case (which incidentally is probably why han and hal based definite articles exist), they fail to explore the significance of this overlap. In the proposal outlined here, the significance is that they are etymologically both derived from *han, and that, at least in the latter case, we see essentially the same expression as expressed by N-DT + Adj.
A number of issues require explanation in such a scenario, starting with the discrepancy between the shape of DT (in or an) and that of the article, il or al virtually everywhere. It turns out, however, this is not a serious problem. The ʾVl-based article, while nearly ubiquitous in Islamic period Arabic, was but one of several forms of the article in the pre-Islamic period. Based on the absence of any article in the dialects represented by the Ḥismaic script (Al-Jallad forthcoming a), and given the diversity in the have an instead of in, the article is usually al instead of il, and the relative pronoun is typically allī instead of more common illī. 224 epigraphic record, it is clear that proto-Arabic did not possess a definite article. Further, in the dialects of the Safaitic corpus, for example, at least three different forms of the article are found: h, ʾ, and ʾl (Al-Jallad 2015a: 74). And while the ʾVl article, probably based on its prestige as part not only of the language of the Qurʾān, and also of CA, it is not the only article attested in contemporary dialects: cf. Yemeni dialects with ʾam/ʾim and ʾan/ʾin, as well as an article ʾa/ʾi where the initial consonant of the noun is geminated, e.g., ab-bayt “the house” (Behnstedt 2016: 72). This latter form, as well as the
Safaitic forms h and ʾ, are probably best explained as reflexes of *han with n assimilation. So reflexes of *han were thus probably more common in the pre-Islamic period, and their restriction to a few dialects in western Yemen the result of the levelling of ʾal.
Another discrepancy that must be solved in the proposed scenario is the different semantics of DT and the definite article. That is, if DT and the definite article are ultimately from the same source, deictic *han, why is the former indefinite and the latter definite. First, it should be remembered that, as Pat-El (2009: 40-2) notes, han did not originally mark definiteness morphologically. That is, the marked/unmarked relationship was secondary to the original function, which was to mark a following adjective as attributive. DT then would represent a stage prior to the spread of the use of this particle as a definite marker. Presumably then, as the use of the definite article spread, and
225 eventually the form ʾal, the widespread use of DT was reanalyzed as marking only modified nouns that were morphologically109 indefinite.
There are several benefits of this explanation for the origin and development of
DT. First, it provides a natural explanation of the use of DT in some dialects as a marker of a specific member of a group, reported for, e.g., Šukriyyah and Najdi Arabic
(Reichmuth 1983: 188-9; Ingham 1996: 53-4). Ingham reports that, when used suffixed to a noun, it implies a semantic value of “a certain” or “a particular” member of a class
(ibid.). Lentin (2008: 220) in a similar vein, considers it the ‘emphatic state’ of the noun in JA. Such semantics are completely natural in our analysis that DT < *han. Further, the distribution of DT suffixed to a noun followed primarily by an adjective is completely expected in such a scenario. Its extension to contexts wherein a nominal is followed by adnominal clauses can be seen as extensions of its original use, as can its use to mark a single, indefinite specific member of a class (for the concept of indefinite specific, see
Brustad 2000: 27-29).
Relics of the original distribution can possibly be detected in, e.g., Afghanistan
Arabic, where the n often assimilates to the initial consonant of the following adjective: bētik kabīr “a big house” (< bēt ’ik-kabīr); haz zaġīrid darvīš “this dervish child” (< haz zaġīr id-darvīš < haz zaġīr in-darvīš?) (Ingham 2006: 33; 2003: 33). This assimilation across morpheme boundaries would be more natural if the particle had originally been prefixed to the adjective. In the Uzbekistan example (#14 above), hin is attested: mū-hin
109 This is of course a simplification. In modern dialects the semantics of definiteness/indefiniteness have been shown to be on a cline that does not correspond straightforwardly to the categories of morphological definiteness and indefiniteness. For an overview and discussion based on data from four dialects, see Brustad (2000: 18-43). 226 aḥmar “golden water.” While it is certainly possible that the h was inserted to break up the sequence ū + in, we might expect a homorganic glide instead, **muyin or muwin (cf.
Bahraini example #16 may-in barda “cold water”), or simply **mūn. It is possible, then, that the laryngeal h was retained intervocalically, but dropped post-consonantally. This is the case, for example, with the pronominal suffixes, where msg. ū(h)/fsg. ā(h) and mpl. um/fpl. in occur after consonants, but with the etymological h retained post-vocalically
(Zimmerman 2008: 615).
A parallel process to the one suggested so far for DT seems to be responsible for a form of the demonstrative, ḏākal, in the dialect of Jabal Rāziḥ in SW Saudi Arabia
(Watson et al 2006: 49), e.g. jēh ḏākal maṭar “such rain came!/it rained so heavily.”
While the article ʾal is not typically used to mark morphological definiteness in Rāziḥīt
(Watson et al 2006: 38), it is clear that the origin of this form of the demonstrative resulted from a reanalysis of ḏāk + ʾal > ḏākal110. If true, its forms a very close parallel with the possible development proposed in this section for DT.
Other examples of DT that could be interpreted as reflecting an original prefix are found in Andalusi Arabic, where DT occurs on originally diptotic nouns, even duals and sound plurals (Corriente 1977: 121; Ferrando forthcoming):
88) muslimīn-in lṭāf Muslims-DT bad “Bad Muslims”
89) bi-ṣaxratayn-an muṣāb
110 Watson et al (ibid., 49), following a suggestion by Werner Arnold, suggest that the suffix is kal, from Mehri kal “all,” so that the makeup of the form would be ḏā + kal. The examples provided, most of which involve yom “day” (ḏākal yom “that day”), fit more with a distal ḏāk + ʾal. 227 by-rocks.two-DT injured “Injured by a pair of rocks”
Even more significant, to my mind, is the occurrence in some texts of DT prefixed to an adjective standing before the noun it modifies, but nevertheless clearly in an attributive relationship (Blau JA 194, n. I):
90) an-aẖar maraḍ DT-another sickness “Another sickness”
91) an-aẖar aib DT-another fault “Another fault”
This proposal could provide an explanation to another peculiar aspect of the distribution of DT in some dialects, namely in its occurrence suffixed to nouns that usually occur in construct with a following noun, where we would not expect to find tanwīn. For example, we saw in Bahraini that the distributive kill “each, every,” is commonly suffixed with DT meaning “each one” (Holes 2016: 132-3). In CA, kull typically occurs either in construct with the following noun (e.g., kullu baytin “every house”) or determined by the definite article (e.g., al-kullu “everyone” or “the whole”), though it is not unattested as an anarthrous substantive kullun “every one/thing” (Fischer
2002: 85). Its use with DT here is thus difficult to imagine if DT were a development from etymological tanwīn. Here again, the proposed scenario provides a slightly more natural path of development. If DT is developed ultimately from *han, and then developed its semantic value of “a particular…” or “a certain…”, then its use with kill
228 and other quantifiers and distributive nouns, can be seen as extensions of this specifying focus. Perhaps also here is the occasional use of DT -in on nouns in Bahrain in examples such as (Holes 2016: 132):
92) takallam, wallah, gōlat-in! speak-IMPV-ms by God, saying-DT “Say something, won’t you!”
Such usage is restricted, and unlike most other examples of DT, both in this and other dialects, in that it occurs in utterance-final position. The word gōlat-in (lit. “a saying”) functions as an enhancer of sorts, and DT, with its role as a specifier, is natural in such contexts.
There are certainly data that are most plausibly explained as developments of etymological tanwīn. These include adverbial forms with DT that are plausibly linked with etymological tanwīn, as well as the Tihāma Arabic distribution, which, as we have seen do not fit the pattern proposed in this section for DT in the vast majority of attestations. Nevertheless, this explanation better accounts for instances where the morpheme clearly functions as a specifying, deictic role, falling somewhere in the middle of the definiteness/indefiniteness spectrum. Further, an origin in *han instead of etymological tanwīn fits the distribution of non-Tihāma DT without requiring an appeal to admittedly odd pausal developments, which would be required to account for why DT was retained only by nouns followed by adnominal attributes.
229 5.5 CONCLUSION In this chapter I have laid out two possible explanations for the origin and development of the morpheme -Vn, usually called ‘dialectal tanwīn’ in the scholarly literature. We have seen that the distribution and syntax of the morpheme can be grouped into two separate groups based on distribution. In the first, into which most examples can be placed, DT is suffixed to a noun followed by an attribute, usually an adjective, less commonly an attributive clause. The second is limited mainly to SW Saudi Arabia and
Western Yemen, where DT is suffixed to any morphologically indefinite noun. I argued concerning the latter, with virtually all scholars, that the most likely etymon is PA tanwīn.
Regarding the first, the distribution raises some question as to whether or not PA tanwīn is the most natural explanation. I engaged Owens’ (2006) argument against this explanation. Specifically, I noted that his skepticism is warranted, given that the various realizations of the vowel of the morpheme correlate mostly with the unmarked epenthetic vowel in these dialects. Thus DT need not be correlated with a specific PA case vowel.
Contrary to Owens, however, I argued against positing a heretofore unknown morpheme that is otherwise completely unattested, and suggested instead that the morpheme descended ultimately from the deictic *han. Following Pat-El’s (2009) syntactic account of the Central Semitic definite article, I suggested the most reasonable explanation, if not
PA tanwīn, is that DT represents an early stage of the same development which produced the definite article, but prior to the morpheme acquiring the semantics of definiteness.
The distribution, suffixed to the noun instead of prefixed, is reminiscent of both Aramaic
230 and Ancient South Arabian, where the same suffixation occurred, but which completed the process of becoming true definite articles.
We also saw, however, that Owens’ primary criticism of the traditional interpretation of DT from etymological tanwīn, namely that the vowel does not function as a marker of case synchronically, is not particularly strong. The contemporary distribution can still be accounted for assuming an origin in Proto-Arabic tanwīn. The main problem with the traditional interpretation is that most scholars assumed either a) that the vowel of DT, whatever its contemporary realization, ultimately originated in tanwīn an (Blau JA), or that b) its contemporary realization is identical to the case form that was frozen (Diem 1991; Behnstedt 2016). I argued against both of these assumptions, proposing instead that the evidence suggests a vowel merger in most of these dialects, perhaps high vowels at first (cf. Bahraini evidence), then complete in many
(cf. Najdi). That such a merger took place is not controversial; indeed in many dialects the merger is complete (cf. qəltu, sub-Saharan, and Najdi dialects). Conversely, in the
Tihāma, some dialects leveled the nominative and did not experience a vowel merger.
The historical implications of the above discussion are several. If DT does not originate in PA tanwīn with a frozen (etymologically case) vowel, then this shows a good deal of consistency between the pre-Islamic epigraphic evidence from the Levant and
NW Arabia, where as we saw in chapter 2, tanwīn was almost universally absent. Thus the only morpheme that matches the synchronic morphology of DT is the deictic *han, which can be plausibly connected with DT. It is interesting in this scenario to note the
231 function of ʾan (< *han) to mark subordinated clauses following verbs in the pre-Islamic epigraphic dialects, as well as the Qurʾān and CA.
If we follow the interpretation of all DT as originating in PA tanwīn, then the different realizations of DT in the Tihāma and elsewhere illustrate clearly that case and nunation was not lost at one time or in one way. So much was already evident from our pre-Islamic evidence (Chapter 2). Unlike with option one, however, the widespread nature of DT in option two would suggest a great deal of discontinuity between the dialects of the Levant and NW Arabia, which lacked tanwīn, and the modern dialects that clearly continue it.111 In this scenario, such a picture confirms the early evidence (see Al-
Jallad forthcoming c) from the Graeco-Arabica that the dialects that spread in the early
Islamic centuries were different than those present in the Levant in the pre-Islamic period.
Finally, if DT originated in etymological tanwīn, pause, that is, utterance-final position, was seen to be significant in the phonetic and semantic development of etymological tawnīn. In most dialects, a situation close to CA prose pause seems to account best for the distribution of DT, and indeed would seem to be necessary for the apparent reinterpretation as a marker of nouns followed by attributes. This has led to a situation in which semantically and pragmatically DT signals fundamentally that the noun to which it is suffixed is specified in some way. Alternatively, it might be that no reanalysis occurred at all, and the form simply only shows up in those places because
111 This should be qualified a bit. I think it is quite likely that DT spread by contact over the centuries, and thus we cannot necessarily determine whether dialects with DT synchronically descend from dialects from a particular region in the pre-Islamic period. Still, that nunation is almost completely absent from the Levantine and NW Arabian epigraphica is telling. 232 those are the only positions in which the phonetic environment in which it was preserved occur. In any event, this is clearly different from many of the Tihāma dialects, where either pausal changes did not occur, or where the vowel was retained but tanwīn lost, the latter being quite similar to CA poetic pausal phenomena. Whether pausal phenomena are at the root of the loss of case in Arabic (so Blau JA appendix 3; 2006) is connected to the discussion of the loss of short vowels in Arabic, which is the subject of the next chapter.
It must be admitted that technically these two options are not mutually exclusive.
That is, it is possible that non-Tihāma DT in is etymologically from *han, whereas some dialects retained adverbial in (< *an) in various contexts, such as marking some frozen adverbial phrases, as well as marking verbal participles. Tihāma dialects are, in my opinion, clearly derived from etymological tanwīn. In general, though, we have a situation in which both solutions are possible, and, based on the arguments advanced above, plausible. The question, then, is whether there are reasons to prefer one to the other. The traditional interpretation of all DT originating in etymological tanwīn has in its favor the argument of economy. In other words, rather than proposing multiple origins, it is certainly easier to posit one, especially when we can confidently reconstruct tanwīn to
Proto-Arabic. On the other hand, economy, while appealing, is not proof and need not necessarily be more probable given the extreme diversity attested across the Arabic spectrum. Indeed, it can be considered likely that various homophonous morpohemes attested in the different dialects originated in several etymons.
I do not believe that it is possible to settle this issue based on the data presently available. It is tempting to take a stance, but, in this case, such a stance would speak more 233 of my own conceptualization of Arabic linguistic history than it would of the weight of the evidence. Scholars weighing in on this issue have been quick to draw conclusions without duly considering the evidence. I believe that, in such instances as these, it is important to present all plausible interpretations and await further evidence.
234 CHAPTER 6: CASE REMNANTS AND FINAL SHORT VOWELS IN MODERN ARABIC DIALECTS
6.1 INTRODUCTION No modern Arabic dialect possesses the morphosyntactic case system attested in
CA and discussed in the sections above. As we saw in chapter 5, the most widely discussed purported remnant of that system is the so-called dialectal tanwīn. There are other features that have been associated with case, however, including sound dual and plural forms, as well as a final a found on frozen adverbs and adverbial phrases. The identity of this final a as a remnant of the accusative, which marked adverbial function of a noun, is widely accepted and will thus not occupy much of the discussion. Other features relevant to our discussion, however, include initial vowels in the third and second person singular pronominal suffixes. These vowels have generally been identified as frozen case vowels, but this has recently been challenged in Owens (2006: 107 ff.).
While Owens’ challenge to the traditional interpretation has helpfully highlighted the problematic nature of previous discussions, I will nevertheless argue that the traditional account is the most economic proposal.
Finally, I will discuss the topic of final short vowels in the modern dialects. As we have seen, much of the discussion around the topic of case loss in Arabic has involved the explanation of regular phonetic loss of final short vowels. Owens (forthcoming), and others as well, have also challenged this based on the presence of supposedly etymological short vowels in the dialects. These short vowels are primarily associated with pronouns, verbal suffixes and interrogatives. In the final section of this chapter I will
235 address this topic, integrating implications of the discussions in the previous chapters, and offer explanations for these forms. In general, I will argue that etymological final short vowels were lost, though certainly not at one and the same time in all attested varieties. I will further argue that many of the exceptions Owens et al cite can be explained by appealing to fairly obvious analogies, and others by more carefully examining what kinds of vowels were truly word final and which were not.
6.2 ADVERBIAL -A AND OTHER REMNANTS OF ACCUSATIVE Most modern dialects attest adverbs and adverbial phrases which attest a frozen relic of the indefinite accusative *an, realized in these dialects as a:
Andalusi Arabic (Corriente 2013: 63): abadā “never” (CA ʾabadan); ḥaqqā “truly” (CA ḥaqqan); marḥabā “welcome” (CA marḥaban); ʿamdā “on purpose” (CA ʿamdan)
Eastern Gulf (Blau JA: 194, n.I): halā u-meshalā112 “welcome” (cf. CA ʾahlan wa- sahlan)
Jordanian Arabic (from author’s unpublished data; see also Al-Wer 2007): ʾahla wa- sahla “welcome”; hala “welcome” (hala <ʾahala <ʾahlā < ʾahlan); barra “outside”; ǧawwa “inside”
Mardin Arabic (Grigore 2009: 252-3): ġadde “tomorrow” (CA ġaddan); qable (< *qablā) “early”
Algerian Arabic (Lameen Souag p.c., apud Al-Jallad and Van Putten forthcoming): ḥeqqa “truly”; dima “always” (CA dāʾiman)
112 Blau does not wager a hypothesis as to the origin of this particular phrase. It is clearly derived from ʾahla wa-sahla. It is probably based on the folk conversion of the second term, sahla into a participle by adding me, followed by the gahawa-syndrome shift of a to after the laryngeal: mesahla > meshala. 236 Most of these are uncontroversially derivable from the indefinite accusative an, with the loss of final nasalization (see below). The adverbs barra “outside” and ǧawwa
“inside” are quite possible loans from Aramaic (Hobeica 2011: 17). Recently, Ahmad Al-
Jallad and Marijn van Putten (forthcoming) have suggested that they, along with the rest of the examples above (and others), are ultimately from the same source, namely accusative an (> ā > a; see below). Another potential etymology, proposed by Lipiński
(2001: 269), is the proto-Semitic *is(a) terminative morpheme, suffixed to a noun. This morpheme was occasionally used to form adverbs, e.g., Akkadian rabîš “greatly,” and even combined with the (possibly) indefinite accusative (Akkadian am) with a distributive meaning, e.g., ūmišam “daily” (Huehnergard and Woods 2004: §4.1.1.3;
§4.3.2). In West Semitic, the realization of this morpheme typically reflects *ah, cf.
Ugaritic šmmh “heavenward,” and Hebrew ʾarṣā “earthward” (see Butts forthcoming for a thorough discussion). In Arabic, Al-Jallad (forthcoming a) has noted that word-final ah shifted to ā, e.g., the relative/interrogative/negator mā (< *mah), but mahmā “whatever”
(*mah + mah). It is thus possible that barra originated in barrah and, like mā, underwent the change ah > ā, e.g., barrah and ǧawwah > barrā and ǧawwā.
As mentioned, the final a vowel originated in the indefinite accusative an, with the loss of final nasalization. Scholars often transliterate the final a as long ā (cf. Blau JA:
194 et passim; Al-Jallad and van Putten forthcoming). This practice is intended to indicate that this vowel was historically long, lengthened after the loss of tanwīn. This lengthening is found in both types of CA pause, prose and poetic (see chapter 5 above). If the modern dialectal forms are the result of the leveling of an originally pausal accusative 237 form (*an > ā), it would explain why it was not lost when other final short a vowels were lost (e.g., darasa > daras “he studied”). We saw above in chapter 5 that many of those dialects that retained tanwīn in the form of DT (in scenario two) also have tanwīn adverbial forms (cf. Najdi ġasbin “it is necessary”; Bahraini lazman “idem”). We could thus naturally interpret the tanwīn and tanwīn-less forms as representing historically the generalization of pausal and non-pausal forms, respectively. At the same time, given the great degree of dialect contact, borrowing and convergence must also be seen as probable contributors to the contemporary distribution.
Another possible interpretation is that the tanwīn-less forms originated in a dialect
(or, more probably, dialects) that resemble the QCT. That is, an initial round of final short vowel loss preceded the loss of tanwīn. Once tanwīn was lost, final short high vowels were lost (after a merger to ə?), and short a was retained.113 This would leave short accusative a as the only etymological short a114, and we would not need to posit a generalization of a pausal form, nor the lengthening of a after the loss of nasalization
(though admittedly this could have occurred in this scenario as well). The strength of this proposal is that it removes the assumption that pausal accusative ā was levelled. The
Andalusi literature, and to an extent the JA and ChA corpora as well, attest what seems to be a more productive adverbial a, whereas in the modern dialects the forms cited above are frozen, and the ending is not productive. This could suggest that, with the breakdown of the case, the accusative continued to be associated with the adverbial use, and
113 Such a distribution is directly paralleled in Gəʿəz (Voigt 1983; Weninger 2011: 1128). 114 On the apparent exceptions to this statement, see below, sections 6.3 & 6.4. 238 remained productive for a time (as proposed by Blau JA: 174 ff., though within a different framework than the one proposed in this dissertation).
A final possibility is that the a on all adverbs in the modern dialects, not just barra “outside” and ǧawwa “inside”, goes back to the terminative *ah, which after undergoing the *ah > ā sound change (see above), was then always realized ā. In this scenario, none of the a-suffixed adverbials in the dialects reflects a *an > ā development.
While this explanation is attractive, it is complicated by the presence of parallel forms in
CA with accusative an, such as marḥaban “welcome.” Lipinski (2001: 269) argues that this originally terminative ending was associated early on with accusative an, and thus these adverbs were all secondarily created using accusative an. For such an association to have occurred, however, it would seem that at the very least pausal forms of the CA forms, i.e., suffixed with ā, must have existed. Alternatively, we could imagine that originally both *ah and accusative an were used to form adverbs. In the varieties behind
CA, one morpheme, that of the accusative an, was generalized as the method of creating adverbs, whereas in other dialects reflected in modern relics, it was instead *ah. If that is the case, then we might imagine that the dialectal forms represent an older state than CA
(and the dialects with tanwīn).
6.3 SINGULAR PRONOMINAL SUFFIXES AND CASE VOWELS Recent discussions of the development of case in Arabic have involved a discussion of the nature of the vowels of the third and second person pronominal suffixes. The length status of these vowels in PS is notoriously difficult to determine because the reflexes of
239 the forms differ across the attested Semitic languages.115 Various scholars have attempted different solutions to this puzzle. Brockelmann (1908: 74ff.) suggested what has been the majority opinion of the past century, namely that the vowels were ancepts, meaning that they could be long or short. Brockelmann’s own intuition was that they were originally long, but that some were shortened because they were unstressed (ibid.).116 Blau (1982:
63ff.) argued the suffix vowels were originally short, but that paradigm pressure, namely the preservation of gender distinctions on suffixes, led speakers to retain them in languages like Hebrew, where short vowels were otherwise lost.
Despite the difficulties in reconstructing their length in Proto-Semitic, I follow
Hasselbach (2004) and Al-Jallad (2014) in analyzing most of the forms as originally short in Proto-Arabic. The reasons, discussed more below, concern the consistency with which the dialects agree with CA. For example, virtually all modern dialects lack 2ms *-ka, which seems to me best interpreted as the loss of final short *a, which also resulted in the loss of final short *a on the 3ms suffix conjugation, e.g., *darasa > modern dialectal daras “he studied.” The main difference between my reconstructions and those offered by Hasselbach concern the 3fs suffix, which I reconstruct long for Proto-Arabic, based on the form in CA, and its almost total retention in the modern dialects. Exceptions to these forms are, I believe, explicable by appeal to analogies. In what follows I will address the major issues around which there has been scholarly debate, including the vowels
115 For example, the 2ms suffix reflects *-ka in Arabic and Gəʿəz, but is present in some dialects of Hebrew, in which short final *a should have been lost. Further, 2fs reflects *-ki in Hebrew and Arabic, but in Gəʿəz, where *u and *i merged to ə, the attested form is –ki < *kī. 116 This position was also suggested to me by J. Huehnergard (p.c.), who notes the cross-linguistic tendency for long vowels to be realized short when unstressed (as in, e.g., Latin). 240 preceding the pronominal suffixes in the modern dialects, as well as the apparent exceptions to the loss of final short vowels. First, I provide a list of my reconstructions of the pronominal suffixes in Proto-Arabic:
Table 14: Proto-Arabic Singular Pronominal Suffixes
3ms hu/hū 3mp hum(ū)
3fs hā 3fp hin
2ms ka 2mp kum(ū)
2fs ki 2fp kin
1cs ī, ya 1cp nā
In proto-Arabic, as in CA, the noun to which a pronominal suffix was attached would, with the exception of the first person singular, still inflect for case: N-case-suffix, e.g., kalb-u-hu “his dog (nom).”
The pronominal suffix paradigms for the modern Arabic dialects, which do not inflect for case, nevertheless attest vowels before these suffixes, which etymologically begin with consonants. The following serve as examples of the regular realizations of these suffixes, regardless of syntax (Fischer and Jastrow 1980: 81; Jordanian forms from author’s unpublished data):
241 Table 15: Levantine/N. African Singular Pronominal Suffixes
Jordanian (Amman) Cairo Damascus Tunis
3ms -o -uh, -h -o, -(h) -u, -h
3fs -ha -ha -a, -ha -ha
2ms -ak, -k -ak, -k -ak, -k -ik, -k
2fs -ik, -ki -ik, -ki -ik, -ki -ik, -k
The origin of the vowels preceding the pronominal suffixes is controversial. They have traditionally been interpreted as frozen reflexes of case vowels, which eventually harmonized with the short vowels of the suffixes, e.g., nominative u was frozen based on harmony with 3ms *hu, etc. (Birkeland 1952: 12, 19; Cantineau 1937: 180; Fischer and
Jastrow 1980: 42; Diem 1991). To account for the vowel harmony, which would ostensibly be possible only after the breakdown of case, and thus the loss of final short vowels, Blau (2006b: 87-8) appeals to the intentionality of speakers, who decided to avoid a homophony between masculine and feminine forms, which after the breakdown of case and loss of final short vowels, should have both become **bābk “your (msg & fsg) door.” Instead, they inserted an a vowel before the suffix for the masculine and an i to indicate the feminine. Blau cites a phenomenon in CA called naql “transfer,” wherein speakers would insert a vowel homophonous with the suffixed case vowel on noun of the pattern of CVCC: al-bakru (nom sing) > al-bakuru, etc. (ibid., 88). However, Blau does not address the biggest issue with his proposal. Given that he believes that a naql would have probably occurred only once a final cluster had been created, it is unclear how
242 speakers would have retrieved the etymological a vowel to mark masculine or the i vowel for the feminine if they had been lost word-finally.
Diem (1991) offers a different explanation. He recognizes that if loss of case was caused, or at least accompanied by loss of final short vowels, then the vowels of at least some of the pronominal suffixes, like 3ms *hu and 2ms -*ka, should have also been lost.
If such was the case, however, then of course the final vowel, with which the case vowel would harmonize, would have been eliminated. Diem, still believing the initial vowels to be remnants of case vowels, argues that the breakdown of the case system was caused by syntactic factors, especially the redundant nature of the Semitic case system, and not the result of a phonetic loss of short final vowels. In Diem’s scenario, case breakdown resulted initially in a state where the short case vowels were in free variation (ibid., 301-
3). Eventually, before pronominal suffixes they were harmonized with the suffix vowel and frozen; in word-final position (including, for Diem, before tanwīn), one case was levelled.117 This is the state of affairs in what Diem calls “nomadic dialects” (i.e.,
Bedouin dialects) (ibid., 303-4). Most non-nomadic dialects eventually witnessed the total loss of these remnants due to their lack of any meaningful syntactic function.
This is an attractive explanation118 because it solves the main objection to the traditional assumptions (for which see above regarding Blau’s proposal in 2006b), namely that case was lost due to loss of final short vowels. If case marking was
117 Diem (ibid.) argues that the various realizations of DT, i.e., un, in, and an, reflect frozen forms of the three primary Arabic cases. For an alternative proposal, see chapter 5 above. 118 That is, other than his distinction between ‘nomadic’ and non-nomadic dialects, for which I can find no good evidence in the realizations of the pronominal suffixes. It seems his distinction is instead based here entirely on the DT. However, as was demonstrated in chapter 5 above, DT is also present in sedentary dialects. 243 reanalyzed as marked solely by word order etc., then these variants might have eventually been in free variation.119 It should be noted here that Diem recognizes the loss of final short vowels at some point, but argues that the breakdown of case was not related to this loss (or, probably, multiple losses), and presumably preceded it.
Alternatively, Owens (2006: ch. 8) has recently argued that these initial vowels originated as epenthetic vowels, completely unrelated to case vowels, the quality of which varied depending on the following consonant/vowel: 3ms *hu > u-hu (addition of epenthetic vowel) > uh (loss of final short vowel).120 As shown in chapter 1, Owens’ arguments against reconstructing case in the ancestor of all Arabic varieties is unconvincing. There is thus no reason a priori to suggest these vowels cannot be remnants of case vowels. Still, the complete loss of case vowels could have led to their loss before pronominal suffixes as well, presumably in this case, per Blau (2006b; see above), via the levelling of pausal forms to non-pausal position, which in turn could have led speakers to insert epenthetic vowels to resolve these newly-created consonant clusters. In other words, since Ø-marked forms were levelled to other contexts where they would be expected to be preserved if the loss of case were the result of a regular
119 Blau’s main objection to Diem’s analysis, with which he interacts directly, is that redundancy is very common in linguistic systems and cannot therefore be considered a very strong factor on its own (2006b: 86). Rather, Blau posits that pausal forms, where tanwīn and case vowels were regularly lost, began to intrude into non-pausal positions as well, i.e., he argues for an analogical extension of pausal Ø-marked forms into non-pausal position. Additionally, however, Blau seems to also hold that some sort of final vowel elision took place, perhaps as a result of this pausal intrusion, but it is not clear to me how he envisions the relationships between these two processes (see e.g., Blau ibid., §4.1, pp. 83-4). 120 It is puzzling that Owens recognizes implicitly in his reconstructions the loss of final short vowels, since this is the typical explanation for the loss of case vowels, which he finds unconvincing (ibid., pp. 2-8 et passim). Since he allows for the loss of these final vowels, which is implicit in his suggested proto- forms, and necessary to account for the data, it is not clear why that loss could not account for the absence of case in the dialects. Thus for Owens, final vowel loss seems a very random, haphazard process. 244 phonetic change (*v > Ø/ C_#), such as the construct, then it is also possible that these Ø- marked forms were levelled to the position before pronominal suffixes. If such a development took place, it is prima facie plausible to expect epenthetic vowel insertion, which could have then harmonized with the final short vowels of the pronominal suffixes.
Deciding between these options is difficult due to the uneven knowledge of the contemporary Arabic dialects, and the virtual absence of historical data for the ancestors to the modern dialects. Nevertheless, a careful examination of the implications of these proposals yields meaningful insights. If we imagine that the vowels in question originated as case vowels, then we must account for speakers presumably sacrificing the morphosyntactic role of case vowels before pronominal suffixes in favor of a non- phonemic epenthetic function. Scholars have mostly assumed that this happened following the breakdown of case (cf. Diem 1991). Most likely, then, the loss of case marking on the unsuffixed nouns motivated the levelling of one form, as in the external masculine plural oblique form īn. The presence of very similar suffix forms in Aramaic, and probably for Hebrew as well, also suggests that such a phenomenon already obtained there (Aramaic data from Hasselbach 2013: 204-5; Hebrew from ibid.)
Aramaic (Syriac) Hebrew
3ms malk-eh < *malki-hi (Gen) malkō < *malku-hu(:) (Acc)
2fs malk-eḵ(y) < *malki-kī121 (Gen) malkēḵ < *malki-ki (Gen)
2ms malk-aḵ < *malka-ka (Acc) (non-Tiberian) malkaḵ < *malka-ka (Acc)122
121 As indicated by the mater lectionis
While on the face of it this explanation might seem to account for the dialect data without resorting to the notion of case vowels, it is mitigated by some further considerations. First, for Owens’ explanation of these forms to obtain, we would need to assume that all dialects resolved these CCC clusters in the same way, namely by inserting the epenthetic vowel after the second of the three consonants, i.e., CCCv(:) > CCvCv(:).
In fact, however, as Owens implicitly acknowledges (ibid., 108-9), many dialects resolve these clusters by inserting the epenthetic vowel after the initial consonant, so CCCv(:) >
CvCCv(:) (on which, see Watson 2007: §3). In such cases, we would expect two different
122 The Tiberian forms are complex. In non-pausal position, Tiberian malkə-kā, but pausally, malkékā. The latter form suggests < *malki-kah (Suchard, p.c.), or possibly analogy with the feminine singular form (Suchard 2016: 232-3). 246 allomorphs of the suffixes to exist, distributed according to the phonotactic rules of the dialect, but this is not the case. That is, if CVCC nouns were the origin of of the epenthetic vowels, as Owens maintains, then we would expect a distribution which matches the two patterns of epenthesis insertion: qalb-a-ka for CCC > CVCC, and
**qalabk for CCC > CCVC. Instead, we only find forms that would need to have originated in CCVC-inserting dialects.
Another question that Owens does not meaningfully answer is why epenthesis would have been necessary in most nominal patterns. Owens’ examples, cited above, are typically CVCC (including CVWYC), i.e., qalbak “you (msg) heart” and bētha “her house,” etc. Elsewhere epenthesis is not typical. For example, most dialects do not resolve CCV clusters: Jordanian (a CVCC dialect) katabti “you (fsg) wrote,” and not
**katabiti “idem” (Al-Wer 2007); Cairene (a CCVC dialect) ġasalti “you (fsg) washed,” and not **ġasaliti (Woidich 2006: 330).123 As Owens admits, the pronominal suffixes, with the exception of 3fs (*hā) and 1cp (*nā), are to be reconstructed with final short vowels (reviewed above) (Owens 2006: §8.6-8.8). Based on the dialectal data on which
Owens relies, epenthesis at this initial stage, where the final short vowels of the suffixes were still present, would only be required for nouns of the pattern CVCC. It seems rather implausible that allomorphs necessary only for nouns of one (admittedly frequent) noun
123 This point also argues against some kind of metathesis, i.e., qalb-hu > qalb-uh. First, we would expect that such a metathesis would be motivated by the same impetus as epenthesis, namely phonotactic considerations. My argument in this section is that the epenthetic argument does not account for the distribution of these vowels in any dialect. Further against the metathesis argument is the fact that the metathesis would have to have occurred only with pronominal suffixes. That is, if metathesis occurred in the same phonetic environment (i.e., -CCV), we would expect the same to affect suffix conjugation suffixes, such as darasta “you (msg) wrote,” and darastu “I wrote.” That these forms do not have dialectal forms **darasat or **darasut, but rather just darasit (< darast <* darata/darastu) “I/you wrote,” suggests that this did not occur there. 247 pattern were leveled everywhere. However, it is not impossible. If there are any dialects where Owens’ reconstruction should be expected to accurately match the distribution, it is thus CCVC-patterning dialects, like Cairene (Watson 2007: 341).
The decisive blow to Owens’ reconstruction, however, comes upon further examination of the Cairene distribution. The Egyptian realization of *qalb-a-hā “her heart” is ʾalb-a-ha, *qalb-a-ka “your (msg) hearth” is ʾalb-ak, and *qalb-i-ki “your (fsg.) heart” is ʾalb-ik, each as Owens’ reconstruction would predict. However, if the forms with epenthesis were generalized, as could be suggested by the 2ms and 2fs forms, we would expect 3fsg -aha to occur when suffixed to any noun, regardless of morphological pattern. Instead, however, we find that on nouns ending in a single consonant, the form is
-ha, i.e., baʾarit-ha “her cow,” and not **baʾaritaha. The same noun, however, when suffixed with a 2ms or 2fs suffix, would have the supposedly epenthetic allomorph, i.e., baʾaritak (msg.) / baʾaratik (fsg.). In other words, in a dialect that fits Owens’ pattern for the creation of epenthetic allomorphs, we would have to suppose that the epenthetic allomorphs of the 2ms and 2fs suffixes were generalized everywhere, but the 3fs suffix retained its original distribution (i.e., occurring only after CC clusters). Thus Owens’ theory does not successfully explain the particulars of the distribution of any dialect type.
The observation that the vowel preceding the 3fs pronominal suffix has a different distribution than the vowels preceding the 2ms and 2fs suffixes is worth further discussion. If, as is traditionally assumed and defended here, the vowels preceding the suffixes in the dialects derive from frozen, harmonized case vowels, we might justifiably ask why the 3fs suffix is not consistently -aha in all dialects with, e.g., 2ms -ak. When we 248 look at the paradigm of most dialects, the distribution of the 3fs suffix patterns with 1cp, and the 3rd and 2nd plural suffixes. That is, these suffixes are typically preceded by a vowel when the phonotactic patterns of the particular dialect dictate the insertion of an epenthetic vowel (seen above for Cairene), also cf. Meccan Arabic (Cantineau 1936: 47,
71):
3fs -[a]ha 2ms C-ak/V-k 2fs C-ik/V-ki 3cp -[a]hum 2cp -[a]kum 1cp -[a]na
In Meccan Arabic, epenthetic vowels are regularly a, which in the paradigm above is inserted before 3fs, 1cp, and 3rd and 2nd plural forms. Thus the simplest explanation of this distribution is that the vowels before these suffixes are epenthetic vowels.
How can this apparent contradiction be resolved? First, the 3fs and 1cp suffixes, unlike 3ms, 2ms and 2fs, are reconstructible with long ā vowels: 3fs *hā and 1cp *nā.
Thus unlike the 3ms, 2ms and 2fs suffixes, there was a length (and possibly qualitative) mismatch between a short case vowel preceding the suffix and the long ā of the suffix. It is quite possible, then, that when the short case vowels preceding the suffixes harmonized with the final short vowels following the suffixes, either the nominative u or genitive i, instead of accusative a, was frozen before these suffixes. If so, then we can posit two straightforward developments to account for the attested distribution:
1) Loss of final short vowels - *u, *i, *a > Ø/C_#
2) Syncope of high vowels in open syllables - *u, *i > Ø/C_CV(:/C)
249 The first rule would have eliminated the final short vowels on the 3ms, 2fs, and 2ms suffixes, leaving the preceding vowels in closed syllables. The 3fs and 1cp suffix vowels being long, and the 3rd and 2nd plural forms being already CVC, resulted in the preceding vowels, left in open syllables, being syncopated. That the accusative a was not frozen and harmonized with the vowels following the 3fs and 1cp suffixes is evident by the fact that a vowels in open syllables are not typically lost in, e.g., Damascene Arabic, in which dialect we find 3ms suffix a (< *ha < *u/iha) and not **aha, which should remain aha (Lentin 2006: §2.1.4; §2.2.1.1).
Ultimately, then, I suggest that the distribution of the pronominal suffixes in the modern dialects does indeed reflect the freezing and harmonizing of case vowels before the pronominal suffixes, with the probable exception of the 3fs and 1cp suffixes, which having long vowels were not identical to any preceding short vowels. Eventually, the final short vowels of the suffixes were lost. Vowels in newly-closed syllables (i.e., 3ms,
2ms, 2fs) were retained, but those left in open syllables (3fs, all plural forms) were syncopated.124
Before moving on to a discussion of the suffixes themselves, a word about the implications of this finding for our understanding of the development of case is due. As all scholars admit, in order for the harmonization of vowels preceding the suffixes to occur, there must have been short vowels following the suffixes as well. That fact requires us to posit that either case loss preceded this harmonization but was not caused
124 I am grateful to Marijn van Putten for a stimulating discussion during which these solutions became apparent. 250 by a regular phonetic loss of final short vowels, or case loss had not preceded this loss.
Blau’s proposal (2006b), which stipulates that vowel loss occurred as a basically regular phonetic loss, seems highly implausible. Elsewhere (ibid., §4.1), however, he does appeal to analogy in order to understand how some dialects might have lost case. In other words, pausal forms were extended to non-pausal positions by analogical extension. Such a process could have occurred more locally, affecting just non-construct nominal forms, not resulting in complete phonetic loss of final short vowels. Alternatively, we might imagine, with Corriente (1971) Diem (1991), the low functional yield could have led to a systemic loss of case, ultimately resulting in their loss word-finally, but retention non- word finally, possibly for phonotactic reasons. Given our lack of historical witnesses to these developments, it is impossible to definitively decide, though it seems likely that probably all of these processes were in play. What seems clear here, though, is that we cannot appeal to (only) the loss of final short vowels to account for the breakdown and loss of the archaic morphosyntactic case reconstructed in chapter 1. This in itself is an important point that should bear on all discussions of this topic.
The reconstruction of the other dialectal suffixes is fairly straightforward. The dialects in the chart above, representative of Levantine and pre-Hilāli N. African paradigms (Pereira 2011: 960), attest 3ms *uhu > uh > u (and often in the Levant) > o (on the form o(h), see Jastrow 1991). The 2ms suffix is ak after consonants and k after vowels, which is also easily derived from *aka (after vowel harmony) > ak (after loss of final short a), with a post-vocalic variant k. The feminine by-forms ik / ki require a bit of comment. Comparative evidence strongly favors a reconstruction of final short i, which 251 we would not expect to remain in these dialects. As has already been pointed out, this is probably due to contamination from the nominative pronoun inti (on which, see below section 6.4) and the imperfect verbal suffix, e.g., Jordanian tuktubi “you (fsg) write” (<
*taktubī) (attested also apparently in Gəʿəz; Hasselbach 2004: 10, n. 28; Al-Jallad 2014:
319). The rest of the forms are uncontroversial.
The examples provided above represent the most common paradigm of these pronominal suffixes. Other dialect areas attest slightly different paradigms. The following should be considered a representative sampling, and are not exhaustive (SE Najdi from
Ingham 1982: 96-8; Ṣanʿāni from Rossi 1939: §4; Sīrti Arabic from Grigore and Bițuna
2012: 552):
Table 16: Mesopotamian/Peninsular Pronominal Suffixes
SE Najdi Ṣanʿāni Mesopotamian Qəltu (Sīrti Arabic)
3ms C-ih, C/V-h C-ah125, V-h u
3fs (a)ha C-aha / V-hā a
2ms C-ik, C/V-k C-ak / V-k ok126
2fs C/V-ić ~ š C-iš / V-š ki
1cs C-i / V-ya C-i / V-ya i
125 Interestingly, Watson (2009: 110) gives 3ms ih/h, instead of Rossi’s ah/h. Implications will be discussed below. 126 The origin of the o vowel is unclear to me. Dialects with similar forms occur elsewhere in, e.g., Ḍafār - uk (Isaksson 1991: 127). Here again, though, another description of the same dialect gives -ak (Iryān, ad- Dāmiġah, and Bainūn, quoted in Isaksson ibid.). These descriptions do not make it clear what the phonetic realizations of o and u in these dialects. 252 I have chosen these three dialects as examples of paradigms that are common across the dialectal spectrum. In the southeastern Najdi dialects, the vowel preceding all suffixes, singular and plural, is the high vowel i, with the exception of the 3fs suffix, which is a.
Further, in most eastern Gulf and SE Najdi dialects, nouns ending in VC do not usually resolve the consonant cluster, e.g., nišadk “He asked you” (Ingham 1982: 97). The most probable explanation, in my opinion, is that the contemporary distribution is a development from the paradigm where the case vowels harmonized with the short vowels after the suffixes, with the subsequent changes suggested above. The high vowel i is the result of the merger of high vowels in these dialects. Thus, e.g., original uh > ih, etc. This would originally have left only 2ms suffixes with a vowels instead of i. With the loss of the short vowel after the 2ms suffix (ka > k), the high vowel i was levelled there as well.
Alternatively, we might imagine that the nominative (or genitive) was levelled to every context, without the vowel harmonizing that is attested in, e.g., the Levantine and N.
African dialects. The almost ubiquitous i vowel is again the result of the merger of the high vowels. Following the analysis suggested above, the a vowel preceding the 3fs suffix is epenthetic, which in Najdi, as in many dialects, is a in the vicinity of gutturals, and possibly aided by the harmony with final a127 (Ingham 2008: 328).
The Ṣanʿāni forms differ from the main paradigm, discussed above, in one main way, namely the vowel of the 3ms suffix, ah. A similar realization is widespread, found in, e.g., some Najdi dialects (Ingham 1982: 98) and the southern Ḥijāz (Prochazka 1988b:
127 It is doubtful that the modern dialects have truly phonemic vowel length word-finally. This is quite possibly due to the loss of final short vowels in most cases, coupled with the fact that word-final long vowels were not always stress (cf. katabnā “we wrote,” which is stressed on the antepenultimate syllable in most dialects). 253 126) and some Sudanese dialects (Owens 1984). These have traditionally been interpreted as reflecting the generalization of the accusative case followed by the loss of final short u: *ahu > ah (Cantineau 1939). Owens (2006: 254-5) argues that there were originally two 3ms suffix variants, one with a high vowel (usually u, i in Najdi), and one with a low vowel, the quality of which was specifically conditioned by the presence of emphatic consonants. As an example he cites Eastern Libyan Arabic, where the distribution is supposedly attested.128 Owens then suggests that some dialects levelled the emphatic variant ah, while others the non-emphatic ih.
I believe the most obvious explanation is that the two forms ah and ih are ultimately the result of a process wherein the distinction between i and a before h word- finally is neutralized. In non-rounded contexts, though transliterated as ah, the feminine ending is actually realized as basically a schwa, cf. Najdi *ah, realized in neutral contexts as ə, i.e., xirzəh “bead,” (Ingham 2008: 327). Ingham notes (1986: 283) that transliterated ih 3ms suffix “his” is often realized the same, namely əh. Such an explanation would also make sense out of the difference variation in transliteration found in a number of dialects, such as Ṣanʿāni, where Rossi (1939: §4) gives ah, but Watson (2009: 110) gives ih. The same is true for Eastern Libyan itself, where Owens notes that Mitchel’s descriptions
(1952, 1960, apud Owens 1984: 93) give 3ms suffix ih, whereas Owens transliterates it ah. Thus Owens’ examples from Eastern Libyan Arabic are probably similar to other
128 He does not provide examples, however. 254 dialects, where the exact quality depends on the phonetic environment.129 Other dialects have been recorded with a form transliterated as -eh (e.g., Yašīʿ; Isaksson 1991: 126). If correct, I propose a very similar type of development as that attested in the case of DT, namely a complete merger of vowels in the position.
The form of the 3ms suffix in Sīrt deserves historical comment as well. In Sīrt, as in most Qəltu dialects130, short high vowels have completely merged to /ə/ in every phonetic environment (Talay 2011: 913). Thus Sīrt məfləs (< muflis) “broke,” and pronominal suffixes kən / ən (< kun/ kin & hun / hin) “your (cpl) / their (cpl)” (Grigore and Bițuna 2012: 551). We would thus expect the 3ms suffix, derived from *u-hu or *uh, to be realized ə as well. I suggest a few possible explanations for its realization as u. First, it is perhaps probable that its realization as u is a result of the loss of intervocalic laryngeal h between two short vowels after vowel harmony occurred (discussed above):
*uhu > uu > ū > u. In this scenario, the u was historically long, and therefore did not undergo the short high vowel merger attested elsewhere.
Another possibility is that the form u goes back to an originally long suffix *hū.
This seems to be the case at Mardin, a town in southern Turkey in which another Qəltu dialect is spoken, where a form hu is attested after long vowels: abūhu “his father” (Talay
2011: 913). There is evidence of long and short vowel variants of pronominal suffixes throughout Semitic. In CA, for example, pronominal suffixes following short case vowels
129 I am grateful to Marijn van Putten for suggesting the probability that the distinction had been neutralized in this environment. 130 The most challenging issue posed by these dialects is the realization of 1cs suffix conjugation tu, which should historically go back to a final short u, but is nevertheless retained and realized u instead of ə. I will address this below in section 6.4. 255 are realized long, while those after long vowels were realized short: bihī “with it,” but fīhi
“in it” (Fischer 2002: 126). The opposite of this system is attested elsewhere, in, e.g.,
Aramaic and Gəʿəz, where suffixes with short vowels occur after short vowels, and suffixes with long vowels typically occur after long vowels, cf. Biblical Aramaic (Ezra
5:11) ʿavḏōhī “his servants.” This distribution led Cantineau (1937) to propose a sort of quantitative harmony, where the length of the suffix vowel harmonizes with the vowel preceding the suffix. A further explanation, offered in Hasselbach (2004), is that the suffixes with short forms are original, with the long forms the result of contamination with the independent form. It is quite possible that various analogies and developments have led to the distribution attested in the various languages (Suchard 2016: 238).
Whatever the case may be, the presence of long and short forms of the suffixes, originally tied to preceding syllable structure, is very possibly behind the different contemporary realizations of these suffixes across the dialects. This is undoubtedly the explanation for the common distribution of the 2fs suffix, cf. Damascene C-ik, but V-ki, where the vowel is always historically long (Lentin 2006: 548). The u forms in the Qəltu dialects then could represent a levelling of the long form to all contexts, with a subsequent loss of the laryngeal h after consonants, thus C-u but V(:)-hu.
A final possibility worth discussion is that in at least some of these dialects, e.g.,
Mardin Arabic, the 3ms suffix does indeed reflect an etymologically short vowel.
Returning to the examples from Mardin, the suffixes are C-u, but V-hu (Jastrow 2006:
256 91).131 If this latter form does not reflect either an originally long form, or a contamination from the 3ms independent pronoun (in Mardin, hūwe) (ibid.), then it could represent a rare retention of word-final short u. In that case, then the merger of short high vowels occurred only non-word finally. The main objection to this solution is the fact that other etymologically short instances of *u are not present in the dialect, namely those of the case and modal systems. This is a serious objection, and must make this final scenario a priori less probable. However, it has the strength of illuminating another particularly difficult challenge that these dialects pose for the historical linguist of Arabic, namely the apparent retention of short final u on the 1cs verbal suffix (on which, see below).
For this scenario to not wreak havoc on the historical phonology of these dialects, we would need to imagine that, at least in some varieties, the loss of case was not the result of regular sound change, but rather analogical. This would perhaps involve, with
Blau (2006b), the analogical extension of pausal forms to non-pausal contexts. Another possible explanation for the loss of nominative u in the Qəltu dialects, where we would expect its retention, is the analogical extension of the genitive/accusative Ø-marked form to the nominative as well.132 It is also plausible that the vowel merger attested before tanwīn (reviewed in chapter 5) contributed to the breakdown of the case system. As the case vowels continued to occur before pronominal suffixes, and plausibly continued to function as case markers in those limited contexts, we are probably justified in imagining a multi-step, complex process, which undoubtedly differed from dialect to dialect.
131 In Mardin, pronominal suffixes which historically began with the laryngeal h drop the h post- consonantally, e.g., bayt-a “her house” (< *bayt-hā). 132 I thank Marijn van Putten for suggesting this to me. 257 6.4 EXCURSUS ON OTHER SHORT VOWELS IN MODERN ARABIC DIALECTS Central to the discussion of the breakdown and loss of case in the modern Arabic dialects has been the controversy over the issue of final short case vowel loss.
Traditionally, short vowel loss in the dialects has been the default position (Fischer and
Jastrow 1980). Recently, supposed exceptions to the loss of final short vowels from the modern dialects have been used to argue against the reconstruction of case to the ancestors of the modern dialects (Owens 2006; forthcoming; Retsö 1994; 2013). The most prominent exceptions to the ubiquitous loss of final etymologically short vowels in the dialects are the widespread realization of the independent subject pronouns with etymologically short vowels, especially inta “you (msg)” and inti “you (fsg),” a minority of cases where the suffixed conjugation occurs with related short vowels, e.g., katab-ta
“you (msg) wrote,” and especially the realization of etymologically short u on the suffix conjugation in the Qəltu dialects (i.e., qəltu “I said”). Further, a few dialects, mainly in
Yemen, attest interrogatives with final short a, i.e., ʾayna “where?” (Behnstedt 2016:
178). Finally, Owens (forthcoming) recently suggested that some dialects of sub-Saharan
Arabic have retained final short a on 3ms suffix conjugations. I will address each of these in turn. I will argue that all but one of these issues, many of which have been addressed, have plausible explanations and do not contradict the notion of final short vowel loss.
The one probable exception is the 1cs verbal suffix -tu attested in the Mesopotamian
Qəltu dialects.
The Arabic independent second person pronouns can be reconstructed with final short vowels: *ʾanta and ʾanti (Fischer and Jastrow 1980: 42; Al-Jallad 2014). If final
258 short vowels were regularly lost in the dialects at some point in the past, we would expect these vowels to be lost, leading to a merger of the two singular forms, i.e., *ʾanti / *ʾanta
> ʾant. The latter is in fact attested for the 2ms pronoun in a number of dialects, e.g.,
Maltese int “you (msg)” (Mifsud 2008: 150). The fact that both independent forms with short vowels are the norm, however, has led some scholars to assume that the loss of short vowels did not obtain, at least not everywhere (Retsö 2013; Owens forthcoming).
Al-Jallad (2014), however, offers a very plausible explanation for these forms. Relying on Hebrew and Arabic data, he suggests that there were two forms of the independent pronouns, an emphatic form which ended with a laryngeal h, and a non-emphatic form which lacked it: *ʾantah / ʾanta. He draws on examples from Levantine dialects which have two forms of the 2ms pronoun, cf. Bišmizzen ʾint / ʾinti (< *inta and *intah respectively) (ibid., 323). In fact, pronominal forms with and without a final vowel where the form with the final vowel functioning as an emphatic, “solemn” form is well-attested in, e.g., North Arabian bedouin dialects (Isaksson 1991: 118).133 I follow Al-Jallad’s reconstruction of two different forms, an emphatic h-closed form, and a non-emphatic form.134 The former was levelled in most dialects, while the latter was preserved in its original function in a subset of dialects. Alternatively, we must mention the possibility that Brockelmann’s and Huehnergard’s argument, namely that these vowels were
133 It is of course possible to have lots of pronominal by-forms without any clear difference in emphasis or function. Marijn van Putten (p.c.) has informed me that some Berber languages have as many as 4 of 5 forms of the 3ms independent pronominal suffix with no clear difference in function. I thank him for raising this point. 134 As Suchard (2016: 221) notes, this is by no means a unique phenomenon. He cites (ibid.) Ancient Greek forms egō and egōge, both 1cs “I,” the latter a compound, emphatic form; Dutch also attests such forms: ik vs. ikke “idem” (ibid.). 259 originally long, would also have led to the same distribution here. In that case, *ʾantā and
*ʾantī were not lost because they were not realized short when the general loss of final short vowels in the ancestors of the modern dialects underwent that change.
The singular suffix conjugation suffixes can also be reconstructed with final short vowels for proto-Arabic on the basis of internal and comparative evidence (with the exception of 3fs *at) (Hasselbach 2004):
3ms faʿala 3fs faʿalat 2ms faʿalta 2fs faʿalti 1cs faʿaltu
In the modern dialects, the 3ms singular forms reflect the total loss of final short a, e.g.,
Jordanian daras “he studied” (< darasa), Najdi kitab “he wrote” (< kataba) (Ingham
1996). Most dialects outside of Yemen reflect the same loss of final short a on the 2ms form, often with an epenthetic vowel inserted to break up the resulting consonant cluster, e.g., Christian Baghdadi qāsamət “you (msg) shared” (< qāsamt < qāsamta) (Abu-Haidar
1991: 57). Some Yemeni dialects reflect a final short a vowel, however, e.g., im-Maṯṯ̣ạ h laṭamta “you (msg) struck” (Behnstedt 1987: 191). It is possible that these Yemeni dialects have simply retained final vowels, but the lack of final short a on the 3ms form in the same dialect (laṭam; ibid.) suggests otherwise. The obvious source for the contamination is the 2ms independent form. Significantly, all those dialects that possess
260 a-bearing forms on the verbal suffixes also attest vnta 2ms pronominal forms. The analogy is straightforward: anti : katabti :: anta : X = katabta.135
The most challenging form is undoubtedly the apparent preservation of final short u of the suffix conjugation 1cs suffix, which is a defining characteristic of the Qəltu dialects of Mesopotamia (Blanc 1964), and is well attested in NW Yemen as well (mostly in dialects where the verbal suffixes for 2nd and 1st person singular begin with -k instead of -t; see Behnstedt 2016: 192-4). In the vast majority of dialects, this vowel, safely reconstructible to proto-Arabic, is absent, representing a regular loss *u > Ø/C_#:
Gilit Mesopotamian (Muslim Baghdadi; Jastrow 2007: 422) kitabit “I wrote” (< katabtu) Jordanian (Amman; author’s unpublished recordings) katabit “idem” Egyptian (Cairo; Woidich 2006: 330) širibt “I drank” (< šaribtu)
Thus those with a u vowel represent a minority of dialects. It is not illogical to assume the retention of a short vowel, despite the otherwise ubiquitous nature of the loss of final short vowels in these dialects, with a few exceptions, discussed above, with probable analogical origins. Its original nature is typically assumed (cf. Talay 2011; Jastrow 2015;
Owens forthcoming). In a response to Jonathan Owens, Al-Jallad and Van Putten
(forthcoming) have suggested rather that some kind of analogy operated to restore a u vowel to the suffix after its original loss. This proposal is based on the argument that, if u were original here, we would expect 3ms suffix *hu to have been retained, which is generally not the case. While analogy is, as we have seen, probably responsible for
135 The paradigmatic relationship between the suffix conjugation and the independent pronoun is evident in innovated forms where the 2ms suffix is replaced with the independent pronoun: cf. Yemeni samiʿhant? “Have you (msg) heard” (Behnstedt 2016: 194); also eastern Najdi šifhant “you saw” (Ingham 2008: 330), where the independent pronoun has replaced the verbal suffix. 261 several phenomena in the pronominal and verbal suffix paradigms, the argument is less convincing in this particular case. Specifically, unlike the 2ms and 2fs verbal and pronominal suffixes, there is no morphological parallel between the 1cs independent pronoun and verbal suffix: ʾanā / faʿal-tu. Thus it is not at all clear what the source of the analogy would be. The other masculine singular verbal suffixes do not share the short u vowel. Further, as I suggested above, the 3ms suffixes in at least some of the Qəltu dialects (e.g., Mardin, see above) could plausibly reflect an original *hu, and those that do not may be due to dialect convergence.136 Nevertheless, without more data, especially any historical material, it is prudent to avoid definitive claims. All that can be said is that the vowel of the 3ms suffix and 1cs verbal suffix could represent a retained original *u, in which scenario case and modal loss were systematic/analogical, and not the result of final vowel loss. If Brockelmann and Huehnergard are correct in reconstructing these vowels originally long, then this represents a retention of an originally long vowel, possibly based on its frequent occurrence with pronominal suffixes, where it is still realized long. Finally, per Al-Jallad and van Putten, some analogy which is not at present recoverable operated to restore the vowel after the loss of final short vowels.
In a forthcoming article (made public on academia.edu), Owens also suggested that, in Sudanese Arabic, final short *a was retained in one morphological class of verbs, namely the 3ms suffix conjugation of II=III (that is, geminate, where the second and third consonants of the root are identical) verbs. He provides the the example of west Sudanic
136 Indeed it is quite difficult to reconstruct prior historical stages based solely on the contemporary dialects precisely because of the well-documented processes of convergence and dialect levelling which have taken place in the past century alone (cf. Holes 1987; Al-Wer 2007 for a few examples). 262 tamma “he finished,” and claims that this final *a vowel is original (ibid., 6, n. 8). In their response, Al-Jallad and Van Putten (forthcoming: 22) argue, correctly in my view, that the most logical explanation is that, in west Sudanic, geminate verbs and III-y verbs have merged. Thus the final a on tamma is based analogically on the final a on, e.g., ṣalla “he prayed” (< *ṣallā), which is historically long. Their argument is strengthened by evidence from Yemen, where the same process has occurred: *madd “he extended,” > in-Naḏị̄ r maddē “idem,” in a dialect where III-y 3ms is, e.g., ramē “he threw” (Behnstedt 2016:
252, 268). As Al-Jallad and Van Putten correctly note, the source of the analogy is the identical morphological form of the 3fsg ramat // ṣallat (ibid.), which in most modern dialects led to a merger in 2nd and 1st person forms. The west Sudanic forms, then, have completed the merger by extending it to the 3ms.
Finally, the presence of a final a vowel on some interrogatives, primarily in
Yemen, would seem to pose a challenge for the notion of final short vowel loss in the dialects, e.g., ʾayna & wayna “where?” (Behnstedt 2016: 178). These a vowels are short in CA as well (Fischer 2002: 150-1). Interrogatives are frequently in clause-initial position, and often do not receive primary stress (ibid.). In that sense, they can be considered proclitic. As such, these a vowels cannot be considered truly word-final.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of forms attested in the dialects end in consonants, attesting the regular loss of final short a. These exceptions are possibly explained by appeal to the close junctural relationship between interrogatives and the final word, whether noun, e.g., ʾayna l-bayt “where is the house?”, or verb, e.g., ʾayna tarūḥ “where are you going?” In this case, however, we might expect the retention of, e.g., short 263 vowels on nouns in construct, where the same junctural protection would hold. And while we could of course appeal to analogy with non-construct nominal forms for many cases, we could not with the feminine singular construct, which has a construct/non-construct morphological distinction, i.e., construct -at / non-construct -a(h). If analogy is responsible, then, we must appeal to the general breakdown of case, so that short vowels on all nominal forms, including feminine constructs, were dropped based on the systemic breakdown of case vowels.
Another possibility worth considering is that the forms which attest the retention of final short a derive ultimately from forms which, like the independent pronominal forms discussed above, go back to h-closed forms. Alternatively, given that these are adverbial interrogatives, it is possible that adverbial a (< *ā) was extended to other adverbs, including the interrogatives.137 Finally, a possible source of the this -a vowel on interrogatives is by analogy from *matā “when?.” The historically long ā vowel (and ultimately derived from *matay) was naturally retained, and speakers could have levelled the long vowel to other interrogatives.
6.5. CONCLUSION The goal of this chapter has been to discuss purported remnants of the case system other than DT in the dialects, especially word-final a vowels, as well as the vowels before singular pronominal suffixes. I also included a brief discussion of word-final short vowels in the dialects because of their prominence in recent discussions of evidence for case in modern dialects. As for word-final a, two possibilities were discussed. The first,
137 I thank Benjamin Suchard for suggesting this as a possibility. 264 that it is a remnant of the accusative case, is the scholarly consensus and uncontroversial.
Given that the vowel typically occurs on indefinite nouns used adverbially, there is a strong possibility that the vowel shares a common origin with historical indefinite accusative <*an. If so, we may either reconstruct it as historically long, the result of pausal lengthening of *an > ā (as Blau JA, et al do). Another alternative, put forward by
Lipinski for Aramaic, is that final a on forms like barrā goes back to original terminative
*ah. If so, then final a would have been protected from loss by the final laryngeal (or, possibly, lengthened *ah > *ā). Regarding the pronominal suffix vowels, I argued for the traditional interpretation, namely that they represent frozen case vowels. Specifically,
Owens’ claim that they represent epenthetic vowels historically was called into question because of the mismatch between the ubiquitous forms of the suffixes, which do not exhibit variation based on the epenthetic rule patterns of the dialects. Rather, the presence or absence of a vowel is conditioned by and large by whether the noun ends in a consonant or a (historically long) vowel (e.g., C-ak / V-k). This is the distribution we would expect if these vowels were frozen case vowels, but not if they were epenthetic.
Finally, I addressed the issue of final short vowels in modern Arabic dialects. I argued, following recent discussions by Rebecca Hasselbach and Benjamin Suchard, that both the final vowels of the pronominal suffixes, as well as the suffix conjugation verbal suffixes, were historically short. The regular absence of final short a everywhere for the
3ms, and in most cases for the 2ms, strongly suggested the loss of historical final short a.
The realization of 2ms forms with an a vowel can best be explained by contamination from the independent pronominal forms, which, as Al-Jallad (2014) convincingly argued, 265 were originally short but non-word final. I followed other scholars in suggesting that the widespread presence of final i on 2fs forms is most likely due to contamination with the imperfect verbal form, which has historically long ī. Finally, as most dialects exhibit the loss of short u for 1cs in the suffix conjugation, I suggested that this strongly supports the proposal that short final u was lost as a regular phonetic change. However, it appears that some dialects, most notably in northern Mesopotamia and Yemen, retained short final u.
Corresponding short final u might be attested on the 3ms pronominal suffix form. Those dialects with final short u 1cs verbal suffix, but which do not attest 3ms pronominal suffixes with final short u can possibly be explained by dialect convergence.
This last point, tentative though it must remain given the uncertainties surrounding the reconstruction of certain forms, nevertheless has potential implications for the question of how the case and modal systems were lost in some dialects, which undoubtedly began in many cases in the pre-Islamic period (cf. chapter 2). We saw in chapters 2 and 3 that regular sound changes can cleanly account for the distribution of case in some of those corpora. In chapter 5 we further saw that, if DT is derived from etymological case vowels plus tanwīn, then regular phonetic and phonological developments can account for much of its distribution as well. The data from the
Mesopotamian Qəltu dialects, as well as the Yemeni -k dialects, suggest that some modern dialects may have retained final short u in some instances, however. If true, this would suggest that case loss (and loss of the verbal mood system), at least in the ancestors of some of these dialects, was due to functional and/or systemic factors rather than phonetic change and phonological loss. Whatever the truth about these u-bearing 266 dialects is, however, we nevertheless have sufficient data to posit a general trend towards final short vowel loss in the ancestors of the modern dialects. The apparent exceptions are all straightforwardly accounted for by regular analogical processes and contamination from independent forms. Finally, I argued that the admittedly ad-hoc nature of these explanations is not evidence against their veracity. Occam’s Razor is not proof, and the unequivocal Semitic and Classical Arabic evidence requires explanation. Indeed, I argue that the varied nature of the developments discussed above is in fact quite realistic, and that instead the simplistic explanations often attempted to account for all examples with one solution are less likely.
267 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONS
As mentioned in chapter 1, the goal of this dissertation was to provide an account of the diachronic development of morphosyntactic case marking in Arabic based on all available corpora. Further, I hoped to show how the regnant historical paradigm is strongly challenged by the attested evidence from the newly identified epigraphic evidence from the pre-Islamic Levant and NW Arabia. A synthesizing discussion of case marking in these latter corpora constituted the topic of chapter 2. I hope to have shown that the case system, reconstructed in chapter 1, is attested both fully (in ʿĒn ʿAvdat inscription), and partially across the Nabataean, Safaitic and Ḥismaaic corpora, supported by evidence from transliterations in the Greek script. Data from the Ḥismaic inscriptions suggests that these dialects were quite archaic indeed, retaining apparently final short *u and *a, and lacking a definite article (Al-Jallad forthcoming a). Safaitic possessed a functional accusative, as well as a modal subjunctive, marked by a, but apparently no nominative or genitive. Based on the developments that emerge from the territories of the former Nabataean kingdom, the breakdown and loss of case in many dialects by the 6th century. We also saw that the differences between these corpora strongly suggest separate explanations, though probably similar processes, to account for the synchronic distribution of case in the available corpora. In other words, we cannot reconstruct one pathway of development that accounts for the diversity of the epigraphic record.
Although previous scholars (i.e., Diem 1973 et passim; Blau 1977) considered these dialects peripheral, and thus an exception to the otherwise conservative nature of the pre-
Islamic Arabian varieties, the clearer the picture of the pre-Islamic Central Arabia 268 becomes, the more it seems probable that Arabic was a relatively latecomer there (Al-
Jallad forthcoming a, c), and thus we can no longer marginalize the Levantine and West
Arabian epigraphic data.
In chapter 3, I argued that a study of the manuscripts of the Qurʾān, without reliance upon the reading traditions that are only attested over a century after the purported composition of the Qurʾān, the evidence strongly points toward a reduced case system. In a forthcoming article, Marijn van Putten and I draw on more evidence, specifically from the rhyme, to argue that the internal data all points toward a variety of
Arabic with case derived from that reconstructed in chapter, but reduced by a regular set of sound changes. This argument nicely dovetails with other studies carried out by Marijn van Putten (forthcoming a, b, c), where he shows that other aspects of the Qurʾān’s reading traditions do not match the linguistic reality behind the orthography.
The Arabic evidence that predates the process of standardization and codification of CA (9th - 10th centuries CE) thus illustrates that the case system of chapter 1 was still functional in many varieties of Arabic in the Levant and West Arabia, but that, by what was probably several types of processes, had begun to develop other functions, with some cases no longer realized. As I mentioned in my discussion, the importance of this picture, partial though it certainly is, cannot be overstated. The traditional narrative, in which pre-
Islamic Arabic was, by and large, conservative and similar (or indeed identical) to CA can now be shown as fiction. This in turn strongly argues against the premise of the same tradition that it was the Islamic conquests that caused the loss of case, whether by mixing speakers of originally distinct varieties or by imperfect acquisition by non-native 269 speakers. At the same time, the conquests undoubtedly played a role, perhaps significant, in the historical development of Arabic. Indeed, it is conceivable that these widened contexts in which Arabic was used, over time, led many speakers to regularize and simplify certain paradigms, including nominal case, and the verbal modal systems. I mean here, however, first and foremost that they can no longer be held to have caused the loss of case.
In chapter 4, I argued that, based on the picture that emerges from chapters 2 and
3, we can thus no longer assume that CA was the only existing variety or register of
Arabic that would have possessed case. I framed this discussion in the context of a discussion of case marking in Middle Arabic. I focused on the roles and functions of the etymological accusative case, marked by a suffixed alif, in various Judaeo-Arabic and
Christian Arabic texts. As we saw, non-CA accusative marking in these texts is traditionally interpreted as hypercorrections based on the author’s imperfect ability to compose in CA. Some (e.g., Hary 2003) have even argued that these mistakes became so common that they eventually solidified into an authentic tradition. I argued instead that the various functions of the etymological accusative can be understood as developments in natural language use, and many of which have Semitic, pre-Islamic and CA antecedents. Additionally, given that the traditions behind CA were not the only ones that possessed case, I argued that it is in fact more natural to begin our study of MA texts without the expectation that a particular feature present in CA, but whose usage differs from that of CA, represents a failed attempt to write CA. Such a conclusion strongly argues against the related practice, common in many studies of MA, of identifying 270 colloquial elements by appealing to modern Arabic dialects. The modern Arabic dialects do not constitute the only possible forms of spoken Arabic in the Islamic period, and we should stop imposing that assumption on pre-modern Arabic!
In chapters 5 and 6 I dealt with possible remnants of the case system reconstructed in chapter 1, in the modern dialects. In chapter 5, I addressed the morpheme in/an, usually called ‘dialectal tanwīn.’ Traditionally scholars have assumed that this morpheme reflected a frozen remnant of a case vowel followed by final tanwīn n. Few, however, offered any kind of dichronic proposals for its retention and distribution. What proposals exist (in, e.g., Blau JA et passim) are plausible only for a subset of the data. Others who have argued against this identification (.e.g, Owens 2006) rightly criticized these proposals, but failed to counter with a meaningful proposal of their own. I offered two proposals. The first is that the morpheme originated not in etymological case vowel + tanwīn, but rather in the deictic particle *han. I argued that its distribution in most dialects could reflect a stage in the development of the definite article before it was associated with definiteness, and that it was frozen at the stage where it marked a noun followed by an attributive adjective when the prestigious form ʾal spread as the definite article. Alternatively, some dialects, specifically those in Yemeni Tihāma, cannot be explained thus, almost certainly going back to etymological case vowel + tanwīn. I offered another scenario that would account for the vast majority of the data as reflecting the traditional interpretation. Rather than seeing the various reflexes of the morpheme in modern diaelcts as either reflecting accusative *an (Blau JA), or the corresponding case vowel (Diem 1991; Behnstedt 2016), I suggested that these forms 271 reflect a vowel merger. In some cases, the merger could have started as a high vowel merger, with a high/low distinction maintained (i.e., in the Bahraini and Omani examples), whereas others represent a complete merger. Such a development, if true, has important implications for our understanding of the development of case in many Arabic varieties.
I concluded the dissertation with a chapter on other proposed remnants of the case system, most notably the adverbial a suffix, and the vowels preceding pronominal suffixes. Regarding the first, I noted that the most common assumption position is that it represents etymological indefinite accusative *an, which, as in CA, had undergone a lengthening after the loss of tanwīn, i.e., *an > *ā. Since vowel length was neutralized in word-final position in most dialects, this historically long vowel is presently realized simply as a, e.g., ahla wa-sahla “welcome.” Another possibility is that it represents the locative morpheme *ah (< *isa / asa in proto-Semitic), which, following the shift of *ah
> ā (Al-Jallad forthcoming a), became ā and, eventually, a. The main benefit to this explanation in terms of accounting for the current distribution is that it does not require that a purportedly pausal form, *an > ā, was generalized everywhere.
In terms of the vowels preceding the pronominal suffixes, I argued in favor of the traditional interpretation that they represent frozen case vowels. Recent proposals (most notably, Owens 2006) that these are rather epenthetic vowels, are not convincing because, as I have shown, the syllabification rules that govern epenthesis in the various dialects would never produce the distribution we find in the contemporary dialects. As others have noted, typologically it is common for case to remain active in pronouns 272 longer than in the nominal system. However, while I agree that the most plausible conclusion is that they do represent frozen case vowels, none of the attempts at accounting for the data so far has proved convincing. I suggest that the singular forms that ended originally in a short vowel are resulted in a frozen case vowel that harmonized with the originally final vowel. Those forms with final long vowels, namely 3fs and 1cp, as well as those that were historically closed, 3rd and 2nd plural forms, are preceded by epenthetic vowels when the frozen case vowels were syncopated in open, non-stressed syllables, a phenomenon which is common across the dialects.
The focused studies to which the chapters of this dissertation are dedicated bear on a number of important topics related to the development of case. First, the binary that is typically envisioned in many traditional explanations for the development of case is clearly an oversimplification. Though we have examples of dialects and varieties with the archaic case system reconstructed in chapter 1, we nevertheless have much more evidence for dialects in which, as a result of one or many processes, attest a reduced case system. This is not unusual or unexpected; indeed, such a state of affairs is attested in other Semitic languages, such as Gəʿəz and Middle and Neo-Akkadian dialects.
Related to this is the issue of the process or processes that lie behind the development, breakdown and, ultimately the loss of the morphosyntactic case system in
Arabic. As chapters 2 and 3 show, there are some varieties of Arabic in the epigraphic and textual corpora of the pre-Islamic period that are most straightforwardly accounted for by a set of sound laws. In the QCT, for example, we saw that nominative and genitive are apparently retained before pronominal suffixes but not word finally, as evidenced by 273 roots with word-final glides. Other corpora, such as in the Nabataean and Middle Arabic corpora, attest varieties in which it would seem that various other processes played roles in the particular developments of case. This is almost certainly true as well for the ancestors of the modern Arabic dialects. We saw, for example, that the most plausible explanation for the vowels behind the pronominal suffixes is that etymological case vowels were frozen and harmonized with the final vowels of the suffixes. As noted in chapter 6, however, for that harmonization to occur, final short vowels on the suffixes were necessarily still present. Thus if a breakdown of case led to the potential for harmonization, the breakdown could not have been caused by a loss of final short vowels.
Given the ubiquity of the aforementioned dichotomy between case and caseless varieties, the point deserves more explicit attention. Given the dearth of data, and the absence of social contextual information for many of the pre-modern (and, often, for the modern dialects as well!), it is often not possible to determine what kinds of processes led speakers to change, or abandon, morphosyntactic case marking. However, it is meaningful I think to remember that systemic, pragmatic, and other factors were doubtless at play in each of the developments discussed in this work. Even regular sound laws spread and are adopted in context of speech communities.
It is very possible that contact between speakers of varieties which possessed partial case and those that had only Ø-marked forms in some cases led to the levelling of the Ø-marked forms. The apparent presence of pausal/non-pausal distinction, where the former were often Ø-marked, could have led to extension of pausal forms to all contexts.
In others, the vowel mergers discussed in chapter 5 could have led to syncretism in the 274 case system, perhaps first merging the nominative and genitive cases, then ultimately all word-final case vowels merging. Alternatively, perhaps these mergers, having taken place only in word-final closed syllables (those followed by tanwīn), led to a state where case continued to be distinguished when word-final, and prior to pronominal suffixes, but not when followed by tanwīn.
As chapter 4 showed, the etymological accusative still retained various functions, and was expanded to other roles as well, apparently in the absence of a functional nominative and genitive in some varieties of Judaeo-Arabic and Christian Arabic. Thus the breakdown or loss of one case need not imply the subsequent breakdown and loss of all case markers in any specific timeframe or by any specific pattern.
It is expected that future discoveries will fill in and change the picture painted above, especially in the on-going expeditions searching for pre-Islamic epigraphica in the
Levant and Arabia. I am therefore not nearly as wedded to the details of the various corpora discussed above as much as I am to the framework within which these and future corpora are analyzed. What I hope to have accomplished in this dissertation, more than anything, is to contribute to changing that narrative from an oversimplified, ultimately ideological model based on outdated historiography and introspection, to one based on nuanced examination that follows the data wherever it might lead. Ultimately, case is but one linguistic feature among many, and should not therefore continue to exercise an undue influence on the narrative of Arabic linguistic history.
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