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Internal developments in the loss of Arabic case endings
Gruber-Miller, Ann Marie, Ph.D.
The Ohio State University, 1991
Copyright ©1991 by Gruber-Miller, Ann Marie. All rights reserved.
UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106
INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE LOSS OF ARABIC CASE ENDINGS
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University
By
Ann Marie Gruber-Miller, B.A., M.A.
*****
The Ohio State University
1991
Dissertation Committee: Approved by B.D. Joseph
F.C. Cadora / " Adviser S . Meier Department of Linguistics Copyright by Ann Marie Gruber-Miller 1991 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful to my committee, Professors Brian Joseph, Frederic Cadora, and Sam Meier. Their advice, encouragement, and patience were invaluable in helping me bring together many types of evidence and methodologies into
this interdisciplinary work. I am also indebted to The Ohio State University and the
U.S. Department of Education for supporting me with three
Title VI National Resource Fellowships to study Arabic. I wish to thank the Graduate School at the Ohio State University for granting me a Presidential Fellowship for a year of dissertation research. The opportunity to study for a year in Cairo at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad was made possible through a Center-sponsored fellowship. Permission from John
Benjamins Publishing Company to use copyrighted material from my 1990 article is gratefully acknowledged.
Finally, I would like to express gratitude to my family for their continual support and encouragement. My appreciation also goes to Stephen Chapdelaine, Ilene Crawford, and Diane Harrington for their technical assistance. Finally,
I wish to thank my husband John for his intellectual and emotional support during the last five years.
ii VITA
July 15, 1953 Born - Nevada, Missouri
1975 B.A., English (with distinction) Manchester College, North Manchester, Indiana 1976-1978 College Campus Coordinator, Regional Coordinator, New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc. (NYPIRG), Albany and Poughkeepsie, New York
1979-1981 Community Organizer, Statewide Administrator, NYPIRG, New York, New York
1981-1983 Graduate Teaching Associate, Graduate Research Associate, Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
1982-1985 Title VI National Resource Fellowship (Arabic), U.S. Department of Education, The Ohio State University 1984 University of Virginia/Yarmouk University Summer Arabic Language Program, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan
1985 M.A. in Linguistics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1985-1987 Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University
111 1987-1988 Assistant Editor, Al-*^Arabiwa. Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures The Ohio State University
1988-1989 Presidential Fellowship, The Ohio State University 1989-1990 Center for Arabic Studies Abroad, American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt 1990 Visiting Instructor in Language and Linguistics, Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa
PUBLICATIONS
(1988). Assistant Editor. Al-*^Arabiwa. Vol. 21. Ed. F. Cadora. Columbus, Ohio: The American Association of Teachers of Arabic.
(1987). Assistant Editor (with Sandra Welch). Al-*^Arabiwa. Vol. 20. Ed. F. Cadora. Columbus, Ohio: The American Association of Teachers of Arabic. (1987). Co-Editor (with Joyce Powers). ESCOL '87: Proceedings of the Fourth Eastern States Conference on Linguistics. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics.
(1986). Associate Editor (with Zheng-sheng Zhang). ESCOL '86: Proceedings of the Third Eastern States Conference on Linguistics. Ed. F. Marshall. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics.
(1990). "Loss of Nominal Case Endings in the Modern Arabic Sedentary Dialects: Evidence from Southern Palestinian Christian Middle Arabic Texts." Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics I. Ed. M. Eld. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
(1987). "Phonetic Characteristics of Levantine Arabic Geminates with Differing Morpheme and Syllable Structures. " Papers from the Linguistics Laboratory 1985- 1987. Ed. M. Beckman and G. Lee. (The Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 36). Pp. 120-40. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics.
iv (1986a). "Loss of Nominal Case Endings in the Modern Arabic Sedentary Dialects." Studies on Language Change. Ed. B. Joseph. (The Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 34). Pp. 56-83. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics.
(1986b). "Morphological Idiosyncracies in Classical Arabic: Evidence Favoring Lexical Representations over Rules." ESCOL '86: Proceedings of the Third Eastern States Conference on Linguistics. Pp. 393-404. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics.
(1986c). "The Origin of the Modern Arabic Sedentary Dialects: An Evaluation of Several Theories." A1 -''Arabiwa 19:47- 74. Columbus, Ohio: The American Association of Teachers of Arabic.
FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Linguistics
Specializations in: Historical Linguistics History of Arabic Arabic Language and Linguistics Phonetics TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... ii VITA ...... iii
LIST OF T A B L E S ...... ix
CHAPTER PAGE
I INTRODUCTION ...... 1 1.0. Introduction ...... 1 1.1. Changes from Old Arabic to the Modern Sedentary Arabic Dialects ...... 9 1.2. Hypotheses of Reasons and Chronologies in the Loss of Case E n d i n g s ...... 13 1.2.1. Johann Fuck ...... 13 1.2.2. Joshua B l a u ...... 15 1.2.3. Harris Birkeland ...... 17 1.2.4. Jean Cantineau andJoshua Blau . . . 19 1.2.5. Kees V e r s t e e g h ...... 20 1.3. Research Presented in this Dissertation . . 23 1.3.1. Chapter I I ...... 25 1.3.2. Chapters III and IV ...... 25 1.3.2.1. Characteristics of Middle Arabic T e x t s ...... 25
II CASE ENDINGS BEFORE THE ARAB C O N Q U E S T S ...... 32 2.0. Introduction...... 32 2.1. Cases in Other SemiticLanguages and as Reconstructed for Semito-Hamitic and Proto- Semitic...... 33 2.2. Cases in Pre-Islamic Arabic ...... 51 2.2.1. Evidence from Pre-classical Arabic Inscriptions and Graffiti...... 51 2.2.2. Evidence from Pre- and Early Islamic P o e t r y ...... 54 2.2.3. Evidence from the Q u r ' a n ...... 60 2.3. Cases in Arabic at the Beginningof Islam . 63 2.3.1. Evidence from MedievalGrammarians' W r i t i n g s ...... 63 2.3.2. Vowel Elision ...... 69 2.3.3. Vowel Assimilation ...... 70
VI 2.3.4. Vowel Harmony and Vowel Preservation (including case vowels)...... 75 2.3.5. Related Phenomena ...... 80 2.3.5.1. Spellings/Pronunciations with Waw for •Alif...... 80 2.3.5.2. Pronunciation/Spelling of Nouns Ending in - a ' u ...... 85 2.3.5.3. Other Reported Pronunciations of Waw for 'Alif...... 88 2.4. Conclusions...... 91
III EVIDENCE FROM MUSLIM MIDDLE ARABIC ...... 96 3.0. Introduction...... 96 3.1. Evidence from Long Vowels before Pronoun S u f f i x e s ...... 100 3.1.1. Conclusions made by Hopkins (1984) 100 3.1.2. Additional Conclusions ...... 108 3.1.2.1. Occasional Pointing of Yâ' as Kursl with Two D o t s ...... 108 3.1.2.2. Long Vowels Replacing Root-Final Hamza in N o u n s ...... 112 3.1.2.2.1. MA Nouns with Ill-alif or -yâ' . 116 3.1.2.2.2. Muslim and Christian MA Nouns with I l l - w a w ...... 119 3.1.2.2.3. Reanalysis of MA Nouns with Ill-ya', -waw, or alif from Nouns with CA III- h a m z a ...... 124 3.1.2.2.4. Conclusions about Case Endings from this D a t a ...... 139 3.2. Nominative -an for Duals and -ün for Masculine Plurals...... 142 3.3. Conclusions...... 144
IV EVIDENCE FROM SOUTHERN PALESTINIAN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE ARABIC TEXTS ...... 149 4.0. Introduction...... 149 4.1.0. Results of the Reanalysis ...... 152 4.1.1. Claim A: Vowe l s ...... 152 4.1.2. Claim B: Stress Shift ...... 156 4.1.3. Claim C: Case Endings...... 159 4.1.4. Claim D: Single Vowel Case Endings 183 4.1.5. Claim E; Accusative Case in Singular and Broken Plural Nouns...... 185 4.1.6. Claim F: Oblique C a s e ...... 190 4.2.0. Conclusions ...... 196
V CONCLUSIONS ...... 200 5.0. Introduction...... 200 5.1. Timing of Events in the Loss of Arabic Case E n d i n g s ...... 203 5.1.1. Relevant Evidence from Semitic...... 204 5.1.2. Relevant Written Evidence from Arabic . 208
vii 5.2. S u m m a r y ...... 217
LIST OF R E F E R E N C E S ...... 219
V l l l LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
1. Classical Arabic Case Endings and their Modern Remnants...... 11
2. Case Endings in Semito-Hamitic...... 36 3. Masculine Case Endings in the Major Semitic L a n g u a g e s ...... 42
4. Vowel Elision in East and West Arabian Dialects . 70
5. Vowel Assimilation in East and West Arabian Dialects...... 73 6. gi]âzi Full-Vowel Forms Which Exhibit Vowel H a r m o n y ...... 76
7. Qur'anic Nouns Spelled with Waw for 'Alif .... 82
8. gi]âzi Pronunciations of Waw for Word Final 'Alif. 89 9. Examples of Partial Preservation of Hamza and Case Vowels ...... 102
10. Muslim MA Words with Kursl-Yâ' Written with Dots. 109
11. "Rederived" MA Nouns, Originally from CA Roots III' ...... 115
12. Nominative Endings for Duals and Masculine P l u r a l s ...... 143
13. ASP Words with Vowel Qualities that Differ from CA ...... 154
IX CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.0. Introduction
Research on the timing and reasons for the loss of case endings in Arabic is a crucial area of investigation for the history of Arabic due to the insights it provides about the emergence of the modern dialects— which have an analytical structure— out of Old Arabic— which had a synthetic structure.
Many of the crucial features that distinguish the modern sedentary (urban) dialects’ from Old Arabic are found in the
’The modern Arabic dialects are usually classified into two groups sociologically and linguistically— urban and Bedouin— and often into six groups geographically and linguistically— Maghrebi/North African, Egyptian (east African), peninsular/Arabian (Saudi Arabian and neighboring areas), Gulf/Iraqi (Iraqi and neighboring northern gulf areas), central Asian, and Levantine (Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian). The present work uses the first type of classification, treating characteristics of the urban dialects which evolved in settled areas during and after the Islamic conquests. Fleisch (1960:574) summarizes the urban/Bedouin dichotomy as follows: The latter [Bedouin dialects] were the dialects of more or less homogeneous and nomadic tries which had emigrated form the Arabian peninsula either before or after the conquests. In general, the boundaries between the two major groups defined above are not fixed absolutely, and it is even possible to discern the existence of an intermediate group of dialects which display both urban and Bedouin characteristics. . . . [I]n general, the Bedouin dialects exhibit more conservative tendencies, and greater homogeneity 2 nominal system, and, moreover, are the result of the loss of the case endings. Therefore, the determination of the timing of the loss of these endings and of the causes of this loss naturally has a significant impact on the question of when and how the modern dialects arose. Of course changes have occurred in the verbal system as well— and these also help distinguish the modern dialects from Old Arabic— but the most major typological changes have occurred as a result of changes in the nominal system. Blau (1961:214-15) lists the following changes: (A) Basic sentential word order has become more fixed,
with the subject now preceding the verb, and the
direct object following it. Arabic has therefore changed from a predominantly Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) language (although with SVO and SOV as
possibilities also) to a predominantly SVO language.
(B) Agreement of the verb with the subject has been extended even to verbs preceding the subject, where
verbs were formerly singular with both singular and
plural subjects, and dual for dual subjects. This
change occurred because the verb now usually
within the framework of the tribe. The urban dialects display pronounced evolutive tendencies; they have introduced morphological and syntactical innovations and, further, differentiated dialects quite often appear within the same urban area 3
follows the subject— in which position it has
always agreed in number with the subject.
(C) The direct object is often indicated by a preceding preposition such as li or M ('by, of) rather than only by word order and case endings.
(D) The construct state, which indicates possession of
by Ng in the construction N,Ng, is often replaced
by analytical constructions with a preposition indicating the possessor, as in the following; (1) maktab-u l-'ustaS-i > maktab li-1- 'ustâô
office-NOM the-professor-GEN > office of the professor (Levantine dialect) (2) kitab-u r-ra]ul-i > le-ktab dyal r-ra%8l book-NOM the-man-GEN > the-book POSS the-man (Moroccan dialect; Versteegh 1984:18)
Differences of opinion about when and how the case endings were lost have led to different hypotheses regarding when and how the modern sedentary dialects arose. As noted
Versteegh (1984), these fall into two groups : (1) proposals that these dialects arose in a gradual process, beginning in the Old Arabic dialects in the Arabian Peninsula before the
Islamic conquests began (shortly after the Prophet Mu^iammad's death in 632 A.D.), and (2) proposals that these dialects arose in a sudden break from Old Arabic as Arabic spread outside the Arabian Peninsula during and immediately following the Islamic conquests (c.a. 632-800 A.D.). The difference 4 between these two views lies mainly in the methodological
issue of how much weight should be placed on language-internal
evidence vs. language-external evidence.
Proponents of the first type of hypothesis emphasize language-internal evidence. To these researchers, the most important fact is that the case endings began to fall out of use before the Islamic conquests. These people therefore consider the modern sedentary dialects to have begun to come
into existence in pre-Islamic times and, after that, to have simply continued the evolutionary process that was already underway, until reaching their present state. For these
researchers (e.g., Birkeland 1952; Cantineau 1952; Cohen 1970; Corriente 1975, 1976), language-external factors take a back seat, if they are taken into account at all; the Islamic conquests are considered to have merely facilitated or at most accelerated changes that were already crucially underway.
Proponents of the second type of hypothesis, on the other hand, emphasize language-external evidence. These researchers reason that the Islamic conquests were such a drastic
sociological change that they must have had a profound effect on the language. For these researchers (e.g., Blau 1966-67, 1977, 1981; Fuck 1955; Versteegh 1984), language-internal
factors are less important. Even if these researchers mention
that some changes from Old Arabic occurred in pre-Islamic
times, they do not treat them as constituting the beginning of
a new language type because they were not widespread. 5 Another issue involved in the loss of Arabic case endings is the direction of leveling and loss. It has been claimed that the most usual direction of morphological change is for unmarked forms to replace marked forms (cf. Mahczak 1957; Bybee and Brewer 1980). Identifying a particular form as
"marked" or "unmarked" is not straightforward since markedness depends on a comparison with other, similar forms. Jeffers and Lehiste (1979:179) define markedness as "[t]he property that provides one member in a pair of oppositions with a distinguishing characteristic or 'mark'." Therefore, whether a particular form is marked depends on establishing whether it has a characteristic that distinguishes it from other, similar forms. Oblique cases are often considered to be marked as
"non-subject", while the nominative case is considered to be unmarked. According to the tendency of markedness mentioned here, then, it would be expected that the nominative case would generally replace oblique cases in historical language change. However, the few remnants of the former case system that remain in modern Arabic show that where Arabic has generalized and retained case markers (for regular masculine plurals and sometimes for masculine duals) , it has done so for the oblique markers rather than for the nominative markers.
Therefore the Arabic situation is contrary to what is claimed to be the usual direction of change in case systems, and so the question arises as to why. 6
An answer may be found in frequency of occurrence of the case markers. Although "markedness" and "frequency" are technically different characteristics, sometimes a feature which occurs less frequently than a similar feature is said to be marked, and a feature which occurs more frequently is said to be unmarked. In such a situation, these terms become nearly synonymous, and so an examination of frequency of occurrence may reveal whether or not a language feature would be considered marked. For example, text counts have shown that for Late Latin, the accusative was the most frequently- occurring case form; and, as mentioned in Miller (1986a: 81) it was the accusative form that "was generalized in the Romance languages as they evolved from Latin." It was further mentioned there that "the accusative case was also the basis upon which the singular paradigm was remade between Ancient and Modern Greek. ..." Since leveling occurred in favor of the oblique stem in these historical changes, then, the same type of change could also have happened in Arabic if occurrences of the oblique cases were more frequent than occurrences of the nominative case. I proposed (Miller
1986a:81) this for Christian Middle Arabic (ASP = 'Arabic of
Southern Palestine'), noting that "it would be reasonable for the ASP oblique marker— which included the greater number of cases (two) — to be the one that was generalized throughout the system while the nominative marker— which included only one 7 case— was lost.Examination of other dialects and time periods of Arabic would enable this hypothesis to be more fully tested, providing more insight into the impetus for the direction of leveling and loss of the case endings in Arabic. Further study on the loss of case endings in Arabic is, therefore, important for three reasons. First, information about the events involved in the loss of these endings is crucial for understanding the change in Arabic from a synthetic to an analytic language and so is important for understanding typological changes in languages in general. Second, this loss can shed new information on the two issues outlined above (the roles of language-internal and -external evidence and the direction of morphological change). Third, no consensus has yet been reached about the causes and sequences of events involved in the loss of Arabic case endings.
This dissertation addresses these points by providing more information on one language-internal aspect of the loss of Arabic case endings which has received almost no attention
^It is also possible, of course, that neither markedness nor frequency of occurrence is the impetus behind a particular morphological change. It is pointed out in Miller (1986a:81) that: a number of different factors influence the direction of morphological change— markedness and frequency being very influential, although not always the most influential (cf. Greenberg 1966, 1969; Mahczak 1957; and Tiersma 1982, who summarizes previous work on markedness and frequency in morphological change and discusses some systematic exceptions). ...” 8 in the literature— the extent and role of the occurrence of fewer than the usual three case distinctions in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times. The basic facts and issues involved in this study are outlined in the following two sections, which describe (1) the changes that have occurred from Old
Arabic into the modern sedentary dialects (Section 1.1), and
(2) the specific events that have been proposed to account for these changes along with my evaluation of these accounts (Section 1.2). My research on the issue is introduced in
Section 1.3 and presented in Chapters II-IV.
Unless otherwise noted, the transcription used throughout this dissertation is phonemic and uses symbols of the Americanist transcription system where available (e.g., fi, Ï, Mr X, y) . Elsewhere, it uses conventions commonly used in transliterating Arabic (e.g., for a glottal stop, and - for a voiced pharyngeal fricative). A dot under the consonants t, d, s, and 5 (t, d, s, Ô) indicates pharyngealization. A dot under the consonant h (h) indicates a voiceless pharyngeal fricative. Where a source is quoted or examples are cited from a source, the transcription system of the source is used, to maintain the integrity of the quotation or citation. Letters placed between square brackets ([]) represent a phonetic pronunciation. The abbreviation A.H. refers to dates in the Islamic calendar, which is lunar and began with
Muhammad's flight (= hiira) from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D. 9 1.1. Changes from Old Arabic to the Modern Sedentary Arabic Dialects
In the absence of pre-Islamic prose texts (discussed in
Chapter II) to indicate the grammar of pre-lslamic spoken
Arabic, classical Arabic (CA) is widely accepted as representing pre-Islamic Arabic speech (Old Arabic = OA) and therefore as representing the ancestor language of the present-day Arabic dialects (cf. Birkeland 1952; Blau 1961,
1966-67, 1981; Ferguson 1959; Fuck 1955). This is problematic since it is also widely accepted that CA was never anyone's native language but was a normative language, codified in the 3rd-4th centuries A.H./9th-10th centuries A.D. by the Arab grammarians, based on the language of the Qur'an, the gadith (= 'sayings of the Prophet Muhammad'), and pre-Islamic poetry from approximately 150 years before Islam (cf. Khalafallah
1960:567). Furthermore, the poetry was itself a combination of a number of dialects, probably including archaic forms, and was also very formulaic because it was composed around the dictates of rhythm, meter, and orality (cf. Zwettler 1978). However, since CA is the earliest Arabic we have that has a substantial corpus of connected prose, it is often used to represent the ancestor of later forms of Arabic, supplemented with earlier information available from inscriptions and reports of dialectal pronunciations. This is, of course, not the optimal situation; but it is the best that can be done. 10 It is of great interest and concern to scholars that classical Arabic had a full system of nominal case endings, while the modern sedentary dialects have only a few remnants of these endings and do not make case distinctions with them.
The details are listed in Table 1 (from Miller 1986a, Gruber- Miller 1990). 11
Table 1
Classical Arabie Case Endings and their Modern Remnants
CLASSICAL ARABIC MODERN ARABIC
Gender Case Indef. Gender Case Indef.
SINGULAR (F) (M&F) (M&F) (F) (M&F)
Nom. -at -u -n
Gen. -at -i -n 1 > -a(t)® 0 0 J Acc. -at -a -n
DUAL (F) (M&F) (M&F) (F) (M&F) (M&F)
Nom. -at -Ini 0 -at/0 -ayn/0 0
Gen. -at -ayni 0 | > (Most dialects have 0; J Acc. -at -ayni 0 DU is treated as PL) REGULAR (SOUND) PLURAL
(F) (M)/(F) (F) (F) (M)/(F) (F) Norn. -at -üna/-u -n
Gen. -at -Ina/-i -n | > -It -I n/0 0
Acc. -at -lna/-i -n
IRREGULAR (BROKEN) PLURAL = STEM CHANGING
(M&F) (M&F) (M&F) (M&F)
Nom. 0 -u -n
Gen. 0 -i -n 1 > 0 0 0 i Acc. 0 -a -n ®The parentheses around the t in the modern feminine singular marker -at indicate that the t is pronounced only in certain environments, as discussed below. 12
Table 1 indicates an interesting variation in pronunciation in the modern feminine singular marker -at, which also occurred for pausal pronunciations of this marker in CA: the -t in this marker is pronounced only in certain environments. These environments are those in which the
feminine marker is followed by a pronoun or a noun which is in a possessive relationship to the noun— the latter called
"construct state" in English, "'idâfa" in Arabic. In Levantine Arabic, for example, "university," lit. "university-
F.SG" (/5am®-at/) is pronounced [5iëm®-3]; "his university," lit. "university-F.SG-his" is [5âêm®-It-u] ; "her university,"
lit. "university-F.SG-her" is [5âëm‘^-It-h3] ; "Yarmouk University," lit. "University-F.SG-Yarmouk" is [ ]æm"^-It yarmuk] ; and "The University of Jordan," lit. "University-F.SG DEF-Jordan" is [5®m®-It Il-'urdun]. Note that the t in the
feminine marker for the modern dual (where pronounced) and the modern regular (sound) plural is always pronounced since it is
followed by a suffix (-In) which is closely connected to it.
Table 1 shows, furthermore, that nouns in the modern dialects have generally undergone four changes from CA in phonology and morphology:
(A, B) Phonology: unconditioned loss of indefinite -n
and -V of all the case endings, and conditioned
loss of feminine singular -t, as described in the previous paragraph. 13
(C, D) Morphology; merger of the nominative marker with the genitive/accusative marker in the
regular plural (-üna with -Ina) and— in those
dialects that retain it— the dual (-âni with - ayni). These facts show that the sedentary dialects have lost their nominal case distinctions.
since these dialects are spread out over a vast area and differ from each other in a number of ways, the question
arises as to how they all came to have in common the lack of nominal case endings since they apparently all used to have them. This question is closely linked to the question of when
and how the dialects originated. Major hypotheses which have included reasons and chronologies to explain this situation and answer these questions are summarized and critiqued in Section 1.2.
1.2. Hypotheses of Reasons and Chronologies in the Loss of
Case Endings
1.2.1. Johann Fuck
Johann Fuck (1955) claimed that the sedentary dialects originated in a common Arabic bedouin language that formed in the military camps and new Arab cities outside the Arabian
Peninsula during the Islamic conquests. This language has been referred to as a military koiné to distinguish it from
other types of koiné that have been proposed for Arabic (cf.
Ferguson 1959). Fuck argues that this koiné was formed as a 14 means of communication between the speakers of different Old
Arabic dialects who intermingled during the conquests. He says that it then underwent simplification into a commercial language for use between the Arabs and their non-Arab servants and wives, who learned it only incompletely because the non-
Arabs spoke different languages natively (e.g., Greek, Persian, Syriac, Aramaic, Coptic, and Berber). Gradually, the upper Arab class took on this simplified Arabic as the children learned it, and the modern dialects descended from the lower class form that had been peculiar to each city, with subsequent borrowings from surrounding areas.
This hypothesis has an underlying problem in that it is speculative, as has been pointed out by Blau (1961:220), who says that Fuck "has relied entirely on intuition, for he expressly states that the particulars of this development are almost unknown, owing to the lack of contemporary evidence."
Furthermore, a major assumption of the hypothesis— that case endings were lost from Arabic due to the foreigners who were learning it not having case endings in their languages— has been shown by Corriente (1975:59n.l) to be at best overstated, since at least Greek and Persian still had case endings at this time.3 So a major portion of this hypothesis is not
Modern Greek, for example, still regularly distinguishes three cases— nominative, accusative, and genitive, and some nouns also distinguish a fourth case— vocative. Since ancient Greek had case distinctions and modern Greek still does, presumably Greek has always had a case system. Therefore, Greeks would not have had a particularly difficult time learning the Arabic cases. 15 supported. The hypothesis that a koiné was formed first also is not well supported since there are a number of reports that speakers of different Old Arabic dialects settled in different locations during the conquests, rather than all intermingling as Fuck maintains (cf. Blau 1963, Cohen 1970, Versteegh 1984) . Therefore it is not obvious that the case endings were dropped suddenly during the Arab conquests due to the factors that
Fuck proposed. 1.2.2. Joshua Blau
Joshua Blau (1972, 1977, 1981) argues that the modern sedentary dialects emerged out of Neoarabic, the spoken language which arose during the Islamic conquests in the towns where Arabs settled outside the Arabian Peninsula and which, he claims, did not use case endings. He argues that the Neoarabic type of speech (without case endings) could not have existed before the conquests because the Arabs of the pre-
Islamic tribes could not have composed the poetry they did
(which used case endings) without the aid of grammars^ if case endings had already disappeared. He further argues that
Neoarabic existed right after the conquests, as shown by deviations from classical Arabic (intrusions of the spoken language, he argues) in Muslim papyri as early as the 8th century A.D. He says that Arabic lost its case endings
^As mentioned above, Arabic grammar was not codified until the 3rd-4th centuries A.H./9th-10th centuries A.D.— up to 500 years after pre-Islamic poetry is known to have existed. 16 because the foreigners who had to learn Arabic generalized the pausal (citation) forms (which did not have case endings) throughout the language. He argues that there was no koiné formed because there was not a dominant linguistic center for it to have formed in and spread from. Rather, he says the sedentary dialects developed separately from each other according to the influence of the predominant group, the degree of foreign influence, and characteristics of the native languages. He does acknowledge that internal factors also played a role in the loss of case endings, saying that the pre-Islamic existence of a few characteristics of the later dialects foreshadowed the major changes to come. Since his ideas about internal factors are very similar to Cantineau's (1953), they are discussed below with Cantineau's.
While this hypothesis is substantiated with more evidence
(papyri) than Fuck's, it still has shortcomings. Blau's reasoning that the case endings could not have undergone loss at all until the Islamic conquests has been shown to not be well supported. Since, as Zwettler (1978) has argued, pre- Islamic poetry was part of a long oral tradition, the poetry could easily have been composed according to the tradition only— using archaic forms sometimes— so that it could have been composed in the form it was even if case endings had already disappeared from the pre-Islamic spoken language.®
®0f course, this poetry could also have been composed before the case endings were lost, as many researchers have claimed, but that is not the point being made here. 17
Therefore, the fact that pre-Islamic poetry has case endings does not prove, contrary to Blau's reasoning, that no case loss could have occurred until after this poetry had been composed. In fact, Corriente (1971, 1973) and Rabin (1951) make a good argument that case endings had disappeared in some pre-Islamic dialects, drawing on evidence from inscriptions, poetry, prose, the Qur'an, and reports of the early Arab grammarians. Blau's argument that Neoarabic existed right after the conquests (generally without case endings, and so essentially different from the pre-Islamic dialects) is fairly well supported, since it is based on written evidence.
However, as I argue here in Chapters III and IV, the written evidence shows that not all case usage had been abandoned by this time. Finally, Blau's argument that the sedentary dialects developed separately according to the group that settled in each area and the foreign languages there is supported by accounts of the early grammarians as well as by what few historical facts we know about the settlements (cf.
Cohen 1970, Versteegh 1984). However, as with Fuck, the problems with this hypothesis show that its contention that the dialects emerged suddenly is not well substantiated. 1.2.3. Harris Birkeland
Harris Birkeland (1952), drawing on the observation that classical Arabic had pausal (citation) forms which were essentially like the modern forms (except for the nominative/oblique merger), took these forms as the origin of 18 the modern dialectal forms. That is, in CA -(t)V-n-# in singular and irregular plural forms in context (non-pausal) position became 0 in pausal position (in isolation and sentence finally) in the nominative and genitive, and it became -a in the accusative. Furthermore, some Old Arabic dialects had pausal forms which ended in 0 for all the cases. Birkeland proposed that these reduced pausal forms of these old dialects were then generalized to context position in a later stage of the dialects so that forms representing more categories replaced forms representing fewer categories: the earlier system with three different forms representing three different cases (one for the nominative, one for the genitive, and one for the accusative case) gave way to a system with one form— 0— representing all three cases. Birkeland stated that this conclusion is the only one possible because:
(A) we know that CA and some old dialects had both
context forms and pausal forms;
(B) the modern sedentary dialects have only pausal
forms, with context forms as relics in places that could not have pausal forms (the construction N,Ng which indicates possession of by Ng);
(C) therefore the form that survived had to have
replaced the lost form.
Even though this conclusion is not explicit as to how the replacement happened, it is a plausible explanation of most of 19 the changes in nouns that took place between CA and the modern dialects. However, it does not explain either the generalization or the deletion (in different dialects) of the oblique cases for the nominative case in the dual and regular masculine plural. In addition, it ignores the fact that some phonetic changes are documented to have occurred.
1.2.4. Jean Cantineau and Joshua Blau
Jean Cantineau (1953) and Joshua Blau (1966-67, 1977, 1981) argue that the loss of case endings began with phonetic changes dropping the final short vowels -i and -u, possibly induced by a stress change from weak to strong, which facilitated vowel centralization and elision. For nouns, it is argued that elision of the final -i and -u was followed by generalization of pausal forms to context position (when followed by another word) in the nominative and genitive (the first two cases to be lost due to dropping of final short vowels). Then final long vowels were shortened so that pausal accusative -1 from context -an became -a. Next, -a was dropped due to phonetic factors, and then accusative pausal forms were extended to context. Finally, the oblique markers of the dual (-ayn) and the regular plural (-In) replaced the nominative markers (-an and -ün, respectively) since there was no longer a need to distinguish cases. Cantineau places a greater emphasis on analogy than Blau does— citing it as the reason for indefinite nouns dropping their -un, -in, and -an 20
endings after the definite nouns had dropped their short vowel
endings due to the phonetic changes.
I have argued (Miller 1986a, Gruber-Miller 1990), and document more fully in Chapter IV, that this scenario is basically well supported. These ideas about phonetic and analogical factors being involved in the loss of case endings
receive support from Middle Arabic texts which show inconstancy of vowel quality and deletion of vowels especially
in unstressed syllables and word finally, as well as case markers generally not occurring but sometimes remaining before pronoun suffixes. This shows that phonetic change probably was involved in some aspects of the loss of case endings (reasonably, at the ends of words) , but that some sort of analogy or generalization of pausal forms to context position must have occurred, since phonetic dropping of final vowels could not explain the loss of the case vowels at other times
in this position. Additional comments on these ideas are discussed in Chapter II. 1.2.5. Kees Versteegh
Kees Versteegh (1984) offers a different type of
explanation. He attributes all the changes into the modern
sedentary dialects to a process of pidginization, which he
asserts happens every time a process of second language
acquisition occurs in an untutored context. He sees the loss
of the Arabic case markers, then, as a result of a process of 21 simplification of the language due to universal principles of simplification which occur in pidginization. He asserts that the early sedentary Arabic dialects may have begun as pidginized forms of Old Arabic used to communicate at home and in commercial transactions in the early Islamic empires. He further claims that we can extrapolate from current similar Arabic language situations to determine what the earlier pidgin language was likely to have been. He proposes that the current Arabic pidgins and trade languages in Africa— Juba Arabic in the Sudan, Nubi in Uganda, the Arabic trade language in Ethiopia, and some Chad Arabic— are such languages, and he examines them for insights they might provide into early Islamic Arabic. Similarly, like some previous researchers (e.g. Rabin), he maintains that we can also deduce the forms of early
Islamic Arabic from Arabic dialects that have retained archaic features due to being isolated from classical Arabic for centuries (rather than leveling their features under the influence of CA, as has happened with dialects that have stayed within mainstream Arab culture). He says that such dialects are the Sprachinsel Arabic dialects— those dialects whose ties with mainstream Islam and Arabic were broken a long time ago, and that these include the Arabic in Uzbekistan, Central Anatolia, Afghanistan, Khuzestan, Malta, and Cyprus.
Often referred to as "the Sprachinsel theory", the use of such dialects to infer traits of early peninsular Arabic 22 dialects must be done judiciously, attending to the time and the region in Arabia that the early emigrants left for far away areas in Asia and Europe. Since this dissertation is restricted to evidence from the Arabia only, in an attempt to control for geographical differences, it does not investigate the Sprachinsel dialects. This is an area worthy of further investigation, however.
Versteegh's pidginization and creolization hypothesis is interesting, but it can probably never be proven. Since many of the changes that occurred can be explained in ways other than pidginization and since Versteegh's definition of pidginization is broader than many researchers use^, adoption of such an explanation of the changes would require a great deal of caution. Furthermore, there is quite a problem with using modern dialects as evidence for what a previous stage of a language was, since we can never be sure that the language did the same thing at a previous state as it does at a later stage, even if its sociolinguistic circumstances are similar.
Thomason and Kaufman (1988:168-70), for example, outline three traditional criteria for status as a pidgin language, all of them narrower than Versteegh*s definition. They list "the three oldest and best-established diagnostic features for identifying a speech form as a pidgin language" as (1) "lack of mutual intelligibility between the pidgin and any of the languages whose native speakers use the pidgin (see, e.g., Sankoff 1980:140)"; (2) "as Sankoff (1980:140) puts it, some degree of conventionalization— or, in Weinreich's [1953; 1958] terms, crystallization. A pidgin language must be learned (Hymes 1971:79); it cannot be produced by a speaker of any other language simply as an ad hoc simplification of his or her own language. . . ."; and (3) "a pidgin is nobody's native language. By 'nobody' we mean 'no community,' i.e., no sizable group of native speakers. ..." 23 Versteegh's argument is flawed by this problem. After arguing that the early Islamic Arabic language was probably pidginized because it was learned as a second language in an untutored setting, Versteegh then tries to back up this point with evidence from current Arabic pidgins. But the current pidgins can give an idea about early Islamic Arabic only if one accepts the original thesis that the early language was pidginized. 1.3. Research Presented in this Dissertation In sum, I believe that while there are flaws and gaps in all the types of hypotheses that have been proposed to account for the loss of case endings in Arabic, those that argue for the gradual evolution of the modern dialects, with case loss based mainly on language-internal evidence, are the best supported. But I also believe that all types of evidence need to be considered in order to develop the most comprehensive understanding of any language change. To this end, I believe-
-as I proposed in Miller 1986b— that further research in both areas is needed in order to get more complete information so that better-informed hypotheses can be made, and perhaps one day agreement can be reached on what happened in the loss of Arabic case endings.
This dissertation adds to our fuller understanding of the loss of case endings in Arabic by presenting additional language-internal details which bear on the topic. It argues that case loss in all the Semitic languages received its 24 impetus with low-level variation in Proto-Semitic; that this variation was leveled throughout the Semitic daughter
languages in favor of the oblique case; and that the direction
of leveling was determined by frequency of occurrence of the case endings. It therefore sees the origins of the case loss
in Semitic times— at least the 3rd millennium B.C., and the first step as the language-internal leveling of the oblique
case. It presents evidence that the Arabic case markers began
to be merged and lost in pre-Islamic times but that they were not completely lost by the beginning of Islam. It further suggests that before the case system was totally lost, the case markers remaining in early Islamic times were
reinterpreted as marking a "prepositional case." Considered
together, all the evidence suggests both a larger role for
language-internal change in the loss of Arabic case endings
and a more gradual loss of these endings than has generally been recognized.
Each of the types of evidence available for researching this topic has limitations, as in all investigations of ancient developments in languages, in which it is impossible to observe or consult native speakers to obtain spoken data.
Accordingly, these must be recognized and taken into consideration, and the evidence from the limited data used
judiciously. Chapters II-IV of this dissertation examine the types of available evidence relevant to this issue, the 25
limitations of each, and the conclusions that can be reached from this evidence.
1.3.1. Chapter II
Chapter II examines the evidence that can shed light on pre-conquest developments of the Arabic case endings. These include (1) cases in other Semitic languages and as
reconstructed for Semito-Hamitic and Proto-Semitic, (2) Pre- classical Arabic inscriptions and graffiti, (3) pre- and early Islamic poetry, (4) the Qur'an, and (5) medieval grammarians' reports of pre-conquest dialects, the Prophet Muhammad's
speech, and non-standard Arabic in the Qur'an.
1.3.2. Chapters III and IV
Chapters III and IV examine evidence from published versions of Middle Arabic (MA) texts. Chapter III examines Muslim Middle Arabic, and Chapter IV examines Christian Middle
Arabic. 1.3.2.1. Characteristics of Middle Arabic Texts
Middle Arabic texts are Arabic writings composed in the
Middle Ages which use a language between that of CA and the modern dialects. One Muslim MA text dates to 22 A.H., but the
MA texts generally begin sparsely in the 8th century A.D. and become more numerous in following centuries. These comprise
the writings of the early Islamic empire as it was expanding
and getting organized, and they are categorized according to
the religious affiliation of the communicators— Muslim,
Christian, or Judaeo-Arabic. As tools of communication, they 26 are the earliest writings in Arabic that contain a number of dialectal elements, and so they provide a window on actual spoken Arabic as close to the time of the Islamic conquests as is possible.
According to Blau (1961:209), there are no known texts written totally in the vernacular of the time. He says that, instead, the writers generally tried to write in CA because it was the prestigious language; but they often let colloquialisms slip into their writing or simply made mistakes in CA— often inventing forms which combined colloquial and CA characteristics— due to either negligence or less than perfect knowledge of CA. He notes (1961:228) that since CA was more of an ideal for Muslim writers (due to religious reasons) than for Christian and Jewish writers, far fewer deviations from CA are found in Muslim MA texts than in Christian or Jewish MA texts. Because of the existence of actual colloquialisms in these texts, then, I feel that they are— despite their particular problems— the richest, most reliable, and most important sources for investigating what the characteristics of colloquial Arabic at this time were. They are especially important for investigating the topic under consideration in this dissertation since they show Arabic at a time between classical Arabic, which had case endings, and Modern Arabic
(Blau's term), which does not have these endings. As I have noted before (Miller, 1986a), "As an intermediate stage, MA 27 provides information about some of the steps the language went through as it changed from the CA type to the modern dialectal type.” For this reason, Blau (1961:206) calls the study of
Middle Arabic "of extraordinary importance for the history of Arabic, constituting, as it does, the missing link between classical Arabic and the modern Arabic dialects.
^As this quote suggests, Blau generally uses the term "Middle Arabic" to refer to the spoken language of the time these texts were written— that is, a language intermediate in time and in characteristics between Classical Arabic and the Modern Arabic dialects. This is how I understood his meaning and how I used this term in my 1986 publications. However, Blau sometimes also uses this term to refer to the new analytic type of Arabic that is shown by these texts to have been emerging at this time— often called New Arabic, to the dialectal elements in Middle Arabic writings, or to the texts themselves. Hopkins (1984) generally gets around this problem by referring mainly to "papyri." However, when he uses "Middle Arabic" (e.g., pp. xlvi-xlvii), he means the second usage— the analytic New Arabic language type. Hary (1989:19- 36) discusses this problem in detail, pointing out (p. 20) that the term "Middle Arabic" has been used in the literature in at least these four distinct ways, causing a great deal of confusion about what is actually meant by the term. He notes (pp. 19-20) that both Blau (1981:215; 1988) and Blanc (1967:406-407) have mentioned this problem and that Blau (1981b:187) has even proposed some new terminology but that these proposals have not caught on. Hary (1989) points out that Middle Arabic was, like all varieties of Arabic, actually multiglossic, comprising both a written and a spoken variety, each having its own characteristics. He therefore proposes (p. 28) to term the former "Literary Written Middle Arabic" and the latter "Dialectal Spoken Middle Arabic," recognizing that both of these were on a continuum of least formal to most formal, and that Literary Written Middle Arabic was also on a continuum of least colloquial to most colloquial (pp. 29-31). Hary's article is well-done and very helpful in sorting out all the confusion about this term, and it is to be hoped that future research on the subject will use such mutually exclusive and explanatory terms as he proposes. I have simply used "Middle Arabic texts" to refer to the writings themselves, "dialectalisms" or "colloquialisms" to refer to elements of the spoken language that appear in these texts, and "the colloquial language," "the dialectal language," or "the spoken language" to refer to the language that was 28 Yet, scholars have generally not taken these writings into account when developing hypotheses of historical developments in Arabic. This is true of all the scholars— except Blau— whose hypotheses are outlined above in Section
1.2. Fuck (1955) and Versteegh (1984) are the only other scholars discussed here who mention MA at all, but they do not draw information from it when developing their hypotheses of changes in Arabic at this time. In fact, Versteegh (1984:7-9) virtually dismisses MA texts as being too problematic to be of much use in such studies.
In order to explore in more detail the contributions these texts can make to an understanding of the loss of case endings in Arabic, this dissertation examines the earliest groups of these texts (Muslim MA for which we have evidence as early as 22 A.H., and Christian MA for which we have evidence as early as the beginning of the 8th century A.D.) in more detail than the evidence discussed in Chapter II, which has already received a great deal of attention in the literature.
Judaeo-Middle Arabic is not examined here because the texts do not begin until much later— according to Blau (1981:19), "only a few short and unimportant dated documents [exist] prior to A.D. 1000"— a time that is much later than the first Arab conquests and so is much removed from the time of the
actually spoken at the time. 29 controversy concerning when and how the Arabic case endings were lost.
Blau (1961) points out that while these texts cannot tell us every dialect characteristic of the time (as no text can), they reveal important dialectal information that is not shown by any of the other evidence we have. For example, since
Muslim papyri as early as the 8th century A.D. show loss of case endings and other analytical features which differ from the Old Arabic dialects, it can be assumed with certainty that such features occurred in Arabic speech at least by this time.
Blau also mentions a major problem with these texts which severely limits our understanding of the phonology at the time they were written— as a rule, short vowels are not written in the Arabic script. Therefore, while one can find out about long vowels, which are written, one cannot tell what changes the short vowels had undergone except in rare instances.
One such instance is a fragment of an 8th century translation from the Greek of Psalm 78, which uses Greek letters to write both the Greek and the Arabic texts. Since vowels are written in Greek, we can learn about short vowels in Arabic at this time from this text. Some of the dialectal information from it could be problematic since it was found in Damascus, Syria, meaning that the scribe was probably a native
Syriac and/or Greek speaker. However, Blau (1966-67:31) argues that its characteristics are close enough to those exhibited by ASP texts (whose writers, being Christian, were 30 probably also either native or bilingual Greek/Syriac speakers) to include it with them for analysis. He says:
Though this text need not belong to ASP, being perhaps of Syrian provenance, it was, nevertheless, included in this treatise because of its special character: its Arabic text is written (as well as the Greek one) in Greek majuscules, expressing the vowels, thus not only exhibiting the vowel system of ChA, but also reflecting the dropping of final short vowels, including the mood and case endings. Since there is no reason to assume that the Syrian dialects were in this respect different from the South Palestinian vernaculars, we were not apprehensive of the possibility of mixing up different dialects and have fully perused this interesting text. Accordingly, while not agreeing with all of Blau's conclusions from the psalm, this text plays an important part in every analysis that considers evidence from Middle Arabic texts; and this dissertation is no exception. The details are examined and re-evaluated in Chapter IV.
In addition to problems with what is missing from Middle
Arabic texts, what appears in these texts also presents problems for researchers interested in dialect characteristics. These were outlined in Miller (1986a:60-61) :
Blau (1961, 1966-67) notes that precautions must be taken when analyzing MA texts because some of the deviations from CA do not represent the spoken Arabic of the time. For example, a number of the deviations are pseudo-corrections, which are a mixture of standard and colloquial features, resulting from the writers trying to use CA but not always applying its rules correctly. Types of pseudo-corrections which are found in the texts include malapropisms (such as writing lasiwama for la siwama 'especially'; Blau 1966-67:50), use of CA forms where they are not appropriate (called 'hyper-' or 'over-correction'— such as use of the prestigious nominative case where the less prestigious oblique case is appropriate; Blau 1966- 31 67:51), and mixtures of MA forms with CA forms (called 'hypo-' or 'half-correction'— such as use of a dual verb before a dual subject, when CA used a singular verb before a dual subject, and MA used a plural verb before a dual subject; Blau 1966- 67:51). Blau notes that the ASP [= Christian MA of Southern Palestine; see Chapter IV for further explanation] texts also show influences from the other language spoken in the area— Aramaic— as well as loan translations from the languages that many of the texts were originally written in— Greek and Syriac. The texts also show influences from CA spelling (such as usually spelling words which had CA gl or 5 with their respective CA letters even though these sounds had probably merged in ASP; Blau 1966-67:56, 113-14) and from traditional literary features which had disappeared from the spoken language (such as following an imperfect verb which ended in a long vowel with the symbol for -n when the dialectal pronunciation no longer included the -n; Blau 1966-67:57).
In an attempt to overcome these problems and identify true dialectal features from MA texts, both Blau (1966-67,
1981) and Hopkins (1984) listed in their studies only those features which occurred in a number of texts. They reasoned that because these features recurred from text to text and scribe to scribe, they, at least, could be reliably considered dialectal. This dissertation follows the same approach and examines the recurrent MA features of Muslim MA (in Chapter
III) and of ASP (in Chapter IV) which Hopkins (1984) and Blau (1966-67) compiled. CHAPTER II
CASE ENDINGS BEFORE THE ARAB CONQUESTS
2.0. Introduction
There are numerous types of evidence that can shed light on pre-conquest developments of the Arabic case endings. They need to be examined as a whole to evaluate the total picture they give of the earliest stages of the case endings. These
include (1) cases in other Semitic languages and as reconstructed for Semito-Hamitic and Proto-Semitic, (2) Pre- classical Arabic inscriptions and graffiti’, (3) pre- and early Islamic poetry, (4) the Qur'an, and (5) medieval grammarians' reports of pre-conquest dialects, the Prophet Muhammad's speech, and non-standard Arabic in the Qur'an.
Each of these has limitations that must be dealt with, but nonetheless they all provide evidence which contributes to understanding the historical developments of Arabic's case endings. For example, the first type of evidence is limited because it requires extrapolating backward from existing forms to reconstruct what previous forms might plausibly have been
’These have often been termed "Proto-Arabic" inscriptions and graffiti. However, since "proto" usually refers to a reconstructed language while these are actual writings, a different term which easily conveys their genuine nature is used in this work.
32 33 like. The other four types of evidence are limited because they are all written, whether for purposes other than recording the contemporary spoken language (Pre-classical Arabic inscriptions, pre- and early Islamic poetry, and the
Qur'an), written down after they were spoken (reports of
Muhammad's speech), or to a substantial degree recorded haphazardly and/or possibly fabricated (reports of pre conquest dialects). Each of these types is discussed separately below. 2.1. Cases in Other Semitic Languages and as Reconstructed
for Semito-Hamitic and Proto-Semitic
All the Semitic languages for which evidence is available for more than several centuries both generalized their dual and plural oblique endings and lost their singular case endings. This suggests that both use of the oblique case markers for all dual and plural nouns and non-use of singular case endings were either (1) old low-level variations in
Semitic which were continued into the daughter languages, or
(2) innovations shared by these languages due to natural tendencies of language change.
There are three basic reasons for related languages to change in the same way, as outlined in Miller (1986b:51-52): Although such tendencies [= natural tendencies of language change] have been grouped and defined in a variety of ways (cf. Malkiel 1981 for a thorough discussion), they fall into three basic categories, namely drift, borrowing, and parallel independent innovations. Drift was described by Sapir, who originated the term, as "variations that are cumulative in some special direction" (1921:155) 34
and later as "slow but powerful unconscious changes in certain directions which seem to be implicit in the phonemic systems and morphologies of the languages themselves" (1933:163). This term thus refers to similar changes in a specific language family due to language-internal reasons. Sapir (1933:163) explicitly distinguished these "inherent changes" "from changes due to contact with other linguistic communities." Borrowing is the term used for this second type of change, which is due to language-external reasons. Parallel independent innovations were first described by Meillet (1918, reprinted 1921) as "innovations . . . oriented in a similar direction" (1921:65; my translation). This term refers to similar changes in typologically similar languages— not necessarily due to genetic relatedness. If the evidence points to genetic relatedness as the reason all the Semitic languages generalized their oblique dual and plural case endings, or lost their singular case endings, then such changes in the case system could be considered as having been a "drift" phenomenon in these languages, due to some variation the languages all inherited from their common ancestor. If this is so, then the argument can be made that earlier variation in Semitic was very important in Arabic's loss of case endings, starting Arabic out with variations in its case system which would likely be resolved later by some sort of change in the system in order to reduce the number of variations. Such an argument minimizes the necessary role of the Islamic conquests in the loss of Arabic's case endings. The details are given in
Tables 2 and 3 and discussed following each table. 35
The Semito-Hamitic^ systems of external case and number endings were the following for the masculine, according to Diakonoff (1965:58, 63-65).
^Other, newer terms often used are "Afro-Asiatic" or "Afrasiatic". 36
Table 2
Case Endings in Semito-Hamitic^
SINGULAR DUAL‘>'<^ PLURAL‘S, by type‘s I.l 1.2 II
LOC-NOM -U(-m/n) -a-u -a(-n)-u -u(-m/na) GEN -a-i -a(-n)-i -I(-m/na) ACC -a(-m/n) ABSOLUTE 0/-a« DAT-LOC * - s f
®About the case markers, Diakonoff (1965:57) says, "[w]e have no means to judge of the situation in Old Egyptian because the texts are not vocalized; thus, if we leave out some survivals in Cushitic and possibly in the Tchad languages, we can judge of the Semito-Hamitic declension only by Ancient Semitic. In its most complete form the system of declension has been preserved in Old Akkadian, where we observe the following forms. . . and he lists the singular forms as showing what the case markers were.
^Diakonoff (1965:63) states that "[t]here were originally three numbers in Semito-Hamitic: the Singular, the Dual, and the Plural, but the Dual is not preserved as a productive form beyond the Middle stage, i.e., among the languages known to us it is found only in Semitic and Egyptian. . . . There are relics in New Semitic and in Berber dialects. ..."
^Diakonoff (1965:63) states that "[i]n the Dual and Plural the noun was usually diptotic, only a Direct and a general Oblique (Genitive-Accusative) case being differentiated."
‘‘Diakonoff (1965:63) lists four main types of plural formation in Semito-Hamitic: "I. Affixation of -a- or -an-. . . . II. Lengthening of the vowel of case-inflection. . . III. Reduplication of the stem. . . . IV. Change of vocalism of the stem (internal inflection). ..." Only the external types (I and II) are dealt with here. Diakonoff states (p. 64) that Subtype 2 of Type I "[o]ccurs in the most archaic of the Semitic languages: in Akkadian . . . and in Southern Peripheral . . . and also in Aramaic; of the non- Semitic languages it occurs in Berber . . . and in Cushitic . . . ; in Somali this type occurs also in the Plural of the Feminine gender. ..." He states (p. 65) that Type II "[o]ccurs only with masculine nouns in languages which had no specific suffix characterizing the masculine gender (Semitic, Tchad, possibly Berbero-Libyan) ", and that it "[o]ccurs in all Semitic languages. . . ." 37
(notes for Table 2 continued)
®Diakonoff (1965:58) says that ”[t]he Absolute form was used (a) for the noun without syntactic connections (as in apostrophe, in enumeration), (b) for the noun as subject or object when followed by a noun or pronoun used as attribute, and (c) for the noun as predicate."
^Diakonoff (1965:59) notes that "[i]t is very difficult to say anything definite of the Dative-Locative case. It has been preserved as a productive form only in Old Akkadian, and as a survival— in the later stages of Akkadian, in Ancient Southern Peripheral Semitic, in Ugaritic, and in Hebrew."
Table 2 shows that Semito-Hamitic, as reconstructed here, distinguished three numbers— singular, dual, and plural; five cases in the singular— nominative, genitive, accusative, absolute, dative-locative; and two cases in the dual and plural— nominative and oblique. For Semitic itself, which includes fewer languages than
Semito-Hamitic does, a slightly smaller number of case distinctions is reconstructed. The traditional type of reconstruction, exemplified by Moscati (1969:94), holds that the Semitic languages had three basic cases: "nominative
(subject), genitive (complement governed by a noun), accusative (complement governed by a verb) . . . ." Moscati says that we might also want to reconstruct a locative case for Proto-Semitic since it is attested in Akkadian and perhaps also left traces in Arabic and Ethiopie. Moscati lists the singular case markers as -u, -i, -a, and possibly -u for the locative; the dual markers as -à and -ay, and the plural markers as -O and -1. In this reconstruction, Proto-Semitic is represented as similar to the Semito-Hamitic reconstruction 38
in Table 2 in that it distinguished more cases in the singular (three or more) than in the dual and plural, which distinguished only two: nominative and oblique.
Alternatively, Kurylowicz (1973:125) proposes that Proto- Semitic had only two cases (nominative and oblique) in all numbers (singular, dual, and plural). To account for the three main case distinctions in the singular, he states:
"[i]t is probable that the regular, i.e. triptotic declension of the sing, is an innovation due to a split of an old ending -i of the acc.-gen. into -i (gen.) and -a (acc.)." He finds the motivation for such a split in morphophonemic alternations that arose from the merger of i with a and u with a after laryngeals dueto the phonetic change i, u > a following a laryngeal. He thus proposes (p. 125-26) that nom -u and obi.
-i were the original case markers, and that they merged after a laryngeal in the following manner:
sing. nom. -u *-fa (I) e.g. kalb-u *zarfa (I) sing. obi. -i *-fa (II) e.g. kalb-i *zarfa (II)
Whereas -a (I) has the function of -u (cf. kalb-u), -a (II) is interpreted either as -± (cf. * kalb-i) or as -a. Hence the split kalb-i (gen.) : : kalb-a (acc.).
He says, furthermore, that the genitive function was primary over the accusative function because the relationship to the nominative was direct for the genitive (both can under certain conditions occur in the same syntactic slot "as determinants of a noun") but indirect for the accusative
(which can be directly related to the nominative only after 39 passivization). Kurylowicz proposes, then, that because of the primary function of the genitive in comparison to the accusative, the genitive retained the -i marker of the old genitive/accusative case, while the new singular accusative case was assigned the new marker -a. In this scenario, diptotes are the oldest form of declension, and triptotes are newer.
In this reconstruction, Proto-Semitic is seen as different from the Semito-Hamitic situation shown in Table 2 in that Proto-Semitic is hypothesized to have had the same number of case distinctions— two (nominative and obligue) — for all of its numbers, and to have later created new case distinctions for the singular. This is an interesting alternative to the more traditional type of reconstruction represented by Moscati's, and Kurylowicz has shown that it is possible to hypothesize a coherent explanation as to how later developments could have occurred from it. Furthermore, it presents an addition to our understanding of how historical change happens in languages, in which creation of new categories has so far been seen as the exception (although it does happen), while death of old categories is the rule. The evidence for cases, especially, is that they do not get created; rather, if change in a case system takes place, the number of case distinctions gets reduced.
Whichever type of reconstruction is accepted for Proto-
Semitic, though, Proto-Semitic has more case markers than the 40 last surviving languages of any of the branches of Semitic, which all lost their case distinctions. Regarding the singular in the NE Semitic languages, Moscati (1969:95) states, "in the course of time . . . these [case (AG-M) ] distinctions become progressively blurred: in Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian the three case-morphemes are used indiscriminately or even omitted altogether." Concerning the singular in the NW Semitic languages, Moscati (1969:95) says, "[ i ] n the later languages the endings disappear and with them the formal distinction between the cases, leaving only a few faint traces. . . ." Similarly, for the singular in SW
Semitic, Moscati (1969:96) sums up, "[i]n modern Arabic dialects case-endings have disappeared altogether— just as they have done in the other Semitic languages." Regarding the dual, Moscati (1969:94) states, "[i]n Arabic dialects, the ending of the oblique cases predominates over that of the nominative— just as it does in the other Semitic languages." This also occurred for the external (sound) masculine plural.
Moscati indicates this when he notes (pp. 87-88) that in the later languages, the masculine plural oblique endings were extended to the nominative. He mentions specifically Neo-
Babylonian (beginning in Late Babylonian), Neo-Assyrian, Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic, but it also happened in Arabic as the modern dialects attest (cf. Table 1, Section 1.1).
Therefore, regardless of when and how the triptotic case system arose in the singular, all the Semitic languages began 41 losing case distinctions at some point and continued with the loss until it was complete, except for some remnants. The beginnings of this loss can be seen through a comparison of the case systems in each of the major Semitic languages at the time the optimum evidence for cases is available. Such a comparison is presented in Table 3, based on Moscati (1969:6- 15, 86-100). 42
Table 3 Masculine Case Endings in the Major Semitic Languages (based on Moscati 1969:6-15, 86-100)
NE Semitic^ NW Semitic^ SW Semitic
Old Ugar.® Heb. Aram. Eth.® Class. Bab.® Arab.®
Early 14th- 1200- 1000- 1st- 4 th- 2nd 13 th 200 100 4th 7th mill. cent. B.C. B.C. cent. cent. B.C. B.C. A.D. A.D.
N.S6 -U -U 0 0 0,(-u)f -u 6.S6 -i -i 0 0 A.SG -a -a® 0* — a®*'*' :a:l LOC -u' DAT/ -igj ADV
N.DU -an -ami - a m G/A. -Inf -ëmi I -ayim I -ayn^ayn‘ I 0m -ayni DU
N.PL —u"'® -uma -una G/A. _I n.o -Ima —Im -In® -an -1 na PL
®Moscati (1969:95) notes that "Akkadian retains the basic case-endings in their entirety: nom. tabu 'good', gen. tâbi. acc. tâba. Only in the course of time do these distinctions become progressively blurred: in Neo-Babylonian and Neo- Assyrian the three case-morphemes are used indiscriminately or even omitted altogether." Woodington (1982:63) states that in Neo-Babylonian texts which she analyzed from the middle of the first millennium B.C., "about 68 percent of nominative-accusative singulars end in -u, and about 62 percent of genitives end in -i or -e." She attributes nominatives in -i to a preceding palatalizing t in 53 percent of the instances, and notes that "many genitives in -u are words that occur infrequently in this corpus. ..." She adds (p. 64) that " [f ]orms ending in -a or in a consonant are very evenly distributed among the three cases. Forms in -a make up about 7 percent of nominative- accusatives and about 8 percent of genitives, and forms with a final consonant are about 12 percent of nominative- accusatives and 13 percent of genitives." She therefore 43
(notes for Table 3 continued)
(° continued) analyzes (p. 65) the singular nouns as diptotes, with the nominative-accusative generally marked by - u (68%), and the genitive generally marked by -i (62%).
Moscati (1969:95) states, "In the North-West Semitic area, Amorite and the Tell Amarna glosses retain the Proto-Semitic case-endings— and so does Ugaritic. . . . In the later languages the endings disappear and with them the formal distinction between the cases, leaving only a few faint traces: in Hebrew the ending -a denoting motion towards a place . . . is regarded by some scholars as such a survival; in Aramaic, Brockelmann (GVG, I, p. 465) considers adverbs [ending in -a (AG-M) ] . . . also as survivals, but this remains highly conjectural."
This language has a diptotic declension in the singular. Diptotes in Old Babylonian and Ethiopie originated due to the breakdown of the case system. Diptotes in Arabic and, possibly, Ugaritic, are mostly determined by categories and therefore appear to have arisen in a different manner— either as an original diptotic declension as proposed by Kurylowicz (as discussed above) or as a later development, proposed by Moscati and others. For Arabic, diptotes include, according to Kurylowicz (1973:126-27), personal names which "are or seem to be derived from appellatives or adjectives," some geographic names, some categories which are treated like proper names such as the names of grammatical forms, "[f]em. nouns or adjectives with suffixed (not radical) -a'u. -a fgatla'u. aatla. gutlâ) . . . the masc. adj. 'aotalu (fem. gatla* or gutlâ), and gatlanu (fem. gatla)"— all of which are originally abstracts, and "[n]umerals in -at used as abstracts". Regarding the situation in Ugaritic, Gordon (1965:56) states, "[s]ome names may be diptotic (with gen.- acc. sg. in -a)." For the situation in Old Babylonian, see note a of this table.
‘‘Moscati (1969:95) says, "in Hebrew the ending -a denoting motion towards a place (e.g. Bâbél 'Babylon', Bâbélâ 'towards Babylon') is regarded by some scholars as . . . a survival [of case marking (AG-M)]. . . ."
®Moscati (1969:95) says, "in Aramaic, Brockelmann (GVG, I, p. 465) considers adverbs such as tahta 'below', bârâ 'outside', etc., also as survivals [of case marking (AG-M)], but this remains highly conjectural." 44
(notes for Table 3 continued)
^Moscati (1969:96) says, "The final -Q of certain numerals may be a survival of the nominative ending: e.g. ahadu 'one' (thus Dillmann, EG, §142, p. 318, though other explanations have been proposed for this element— cf. Brockelmann, GVG, II, p. 274)."
%oscati (1969:96) says this ending, which also indicates "motion towards a place", occurs for both the accusative case and the construct state, "both in the singular and in the plural of nouns terminating in a consonant: e.g. nom. 'aabdrt 'servants', acc. and constr. 'aabdrta. The ending-a of the construct state has possibly arisen from an analogical extension of the accusative morpheme." *'These are the endings for proper names, which Moscati (1969:96) says "are either indeclinable or form an accusative by the attachment of stressed -hâ (e.g. Ydshaaha 'Isaac' [acc.])."
’Moscati (1969:94-95) states, "To the three basic cases in Proto-Semitic we might have to add a locative in -u which is attested in Akkadian and traces of which may perhaps be detected in other languages as well— esp. in adverbs such as Ar. ta^tu 'below' and aablu 'before', Eth. la^ia 'above' and kantfi 'gratuitously'. Some of these examples may be open to doubt. They also raise the problem of the quantity of the locative ending -u. ..." He states further (p. 95) that " [t]he Akkadian locative in -u . . . is often used with prepositions (e.g. ina libbu 'in the midst of, within') or appears joined to prepositions (e.g. baluFml 'without', iStuFml 'from'. . . . According to Gelb (OA, pp. 144-45) the vowel of the locative ending was originally long; according to von Soden (GAG, pp. 87-88) its length is a late and secondary development. The material at our disposal seems to favor this latter view." Von Soden (1969:87-90) lists this -u as occurring in Old Babylonian as a locative-adverbial.
^Moscati (1969:95) states that this is a fifth case in Akkadian and that "[a]s a dative this occurs in only the most ancient phase of the language (e.g. muatiS 'to die', amlriS 'to see'); for -i§ in comparisons note ili§ 'like a god'. As an adverbial, however, it remains throughout the entire period of Akkadian (e.g. madiS 'much', damai§ 'well', etc.). In conjunction with the ending -am (more rarely -urn), used adverbially, -i§ assumes either terminative or distributive function (e.g. anniSam 'higher', ümiëam 'daily')." 45
(notes for Table 3 continued)
(■’ continued) Von Soden (1969:87-90) lists this ending as occurring in Old Babylonian as a terminative-adverbial. It also occurs as a terminative-adverbial in biblical Hebrew (- ah), Ugaritic (-h), and in Ethiopie in personal names (-ha, where h is a fricative laryngeal and typically corresponds to Akkadian S, e.g. Akk. §ü 'he' where other languages have hO) and elsewhere (-a).
k-ln is the Babylonian form; -en the Assyrian form. Reduction of ay > 1 is a regular change in Babylonian. Moscati (1969:93) notes that "[n]unation is dropped in the more recent period. The distinction between the cases is gradually lost, and in Middle Akkadian -en/-ln predominate over -an." Furthermore, Woodington (1982:59) says of Neo-Babylonian in the middle of the first millennium B.C., "no dual remains." ^Moscati (1969:94) says that "in Syriac the dual appears to occur in only two words (tdrën rtartënl 'two' and matën 'two hundred')." He later specifically states (p. 98) that "there is no dual."
"Moscati (1969:94) says that "Ethiopie preserves only a few traces of the dual, represented by the ending f*av >) ë: k8l'ë 'two'. . . 'ddë 'hands' (before suffixes), );iaa“ë 'loins'."
"Moscati (1969:87) states that the Akk. M.PL endings are nom -Ü, gen./acc. -1 (Assyrian gen./acc. -ë, "later extended in part to Late Babylonian) . . . until the Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian period, where -1 (-ë) prevails and is extended to the nominative: e.g. sing, ëarrü 'king', pi. nom. Sarrü, gen./acc. Sarrl/ë ; Neo-Bab. and Neo-Ass. pi. nom./gen./acc. iarri/ë ."
"Regarding -an, Moscati (1969:88) says, "In Akkadian we find nom. -arm, gen./acc. - an! (combination of -an with -u, -1.) in the Old and Middle Periods, -an! for all cases in Late Akkadian: e.g. Sarru 'king', pi. nom. Sarrânü. gen./acc. Sarranl (Late period ëarrânl for all cases). In Syriac we find -anin (combination of -an with -In) : e.g. rabbâ 'master', pi. rabbanln. According to Goetze (Language 22 [1946], pp. 121-30) the ending -an designates 'individual' plurals as distinct from 'general' ones (e.g. Akk. ilfl 'the gods', ilânü 'some gods' or 'the gods taken individually'). Gelb (Morphology of Akkadian, pp. 14-15) regards it as an ending without specific significance which is used to reinforce short nouns. The ending -an appears also with internal plurals. ..." 46
As can be seen from Table 3, the fairly large number of case distinctions in Semito-Hamitic was reduced in all the
Semitic daughter languages. Furthermore, the later representatives of each branch of Semitic lost all their case distinctions. This same diachronic change throughout all of Semitic is the type of evidence needed to hypothesize that the loss of cases was a drift phenomenon in Semitic. Since all the branches of Semitic lost all their case endings over time, this suggests that the daughter languages all inherited from Semitic some sort of variation in the case system which they could not tolerate over a long period of time. They had to eliminate the variation, and so they gradually reduced the number of cases which they had inherited from Semitic. Regarding the dual, Syriac (the most recent representative cited of NW Semitic) and Ethiopie (SE Semitic) lost this category except for a few remnants of the oblique marker, while Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian (the most recent representatives cited of NE Semitic), Hebrew and Aramaic (intermediate in time of the NW Semitic languages) generalized the oblique form to include the nominative as well.
Therefore, of the major Semitic languages, only Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Classical Arabic retained the nominative/oblique distinction in the dual. Even among these languages, though, those which had later stages also replaced this distinction with one form for all dual nouns. Akkadian gave way to Neo-
Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian which, as just mentioned, both 47 generalized the obligue form of the dual, as did the modern
Arabic dialects (the most recent representative cited of SE
Semitic), as shown in Table 1 (Section 1.1). Practically the same changes from Semito-Hamitic also occurred in the plural for all these languages. The only major difference from how they treated the dual distinction is that both Syriac and Ethiopie retained a plural marker rather than losing it as they had the dual marker. They both made changes in the plural, though, from Semito-Hamitic, generalizing the oblique form to include the nominative, as the other Semitic languages did.
Since all these related languages— except Ugaritic, which is attested for only the 13th and 14th centuries, B.C.— got rid of the Semito-Hamitic dual and plural case distinctions, this suggests that something was already in the parent language which precipitated the same type of change in all the daughter languages. The likely candidate is the variability in the Semito-Hamitic plural endings. Since languages do not tolerate forever a large number of forms for the same function— especially for plural marking, it was very likely that the Semitic daughter languages would get rid of this degree of variability.
Furthermore, since these languages in all but one instance generalized the oblique form to include the nominative form, there must have also been a phenomenon in
Semitic to predispose all the daughter languages to generalize 48 in the same direction. The fact that everything except nominative was grouped together with the obligue case in the
Semito-Hamitic duals and plurals means that the oblique marker probably had a higher frequency of occurrence than the nominative marker did.^ Therefore, the Semitic daughter languages generalized the marker that occurred the most frequently. In this situation, then, frequency would have predominated over other characteristics of markedness to guide the diachronic change.
Regarding the singular case endings, the languages which preserved the Semito-Hamitic dual and plural distinctions—
Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Classical Arabic— also preserved the three-case singular distinction usually reconstructed for
Semitic. As with the dual and plural, the two of these three languages for which evidence is available for more than a number of centuries (Akkadian as Neo-Babylonian and Neo-
Assyrian, and the modern Arabic dialects) also broke down the
Semitic singular case system, as did the other Semitic languages. Also, while Ugaritic retained the singular case endings in the later half of the 2nd millennium B.C., Hebrew had lost these case endings by the beginning of the 1st
^Even though all sentences have subjects— marked by the nominative case, while all sentences do not have objects— marked by the oblique case, it could very well have been true in Semitic that there were still more instances of oblique markers than of nominative markers. This is so because the Semitic languages often indicate pronouns with suffixes attached to the verb. Therefore, many subjects of sentences are indicated by suffixed pronouns rather than by separate nouns with case markers attached. 49 millennium B.C. This illustrates clearly the tendency for language-internal case loss in Semitic by showing it here in sister languages in the same branch of Semitic. All this evidence shows that loss of the singular cases was a language- internal trend in the Semitic languages. Furthermore, it has been documented that two of the Semitic languages— Akkadian and Ethiopie— collapsed two of the singular cases into one, creating diptotic distinctions as the singular case system was breaking down. As mentioned in note a for Table 3, Moscati (1969:95) reports that the Akkadian case distinctions became "progressively blurred", so that they were "used indiscriminately or even omitted altogether" in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian. As further discussed in note c for Table 3, Woodington (1982:63-65) reports more details of the Neo-Babylonian situation. She found that in the majority of instances, the nominative and accusative singular fell together to create the diptotic distinction nominative- accusative (marked by -u), opposed to the genitive (marked by -i/-e). For Ethiopie, Bergstràsser (1983[1928]:124) says that the nominative -u and the genitive -i first merged and later dropped altogether, while the accusative -a was retained, resulting in the diptotic distinction nominative-genitive -u, opposed to the accusative -a.
A variety of explanations has been proposed for how and why the singular case vowels were lost in various Semitic languages (cf. Section 1.2 for the explanations proposed for 50
Arabic), and much more research and documentation need to be done on the individual languages for any of the explanations to predominate. It is interesting, however, that the type of documented change just described for the Akkadian and Ethiopie loss of singular case endings— generalization of one category to include a formerly separate one— is the type of change that occurred in all the Semitic languages in the dual and plural categories as those case distinctions were lost. This suggests that Proto-Semitic could also have had some variation in the singular case system, as it seems to have had in the dual and plural systems, and that the various Semitic languages generalized the old singular case variations in different ways as they were losing their case systems as a whole. Word counts for other Semitic languages such as Woodington (1982) did for Neo-Babylonian would provide valuable information for evaluating this hypothesis.
Additional investigations of other hypotheses are, of course, needed as well.
Therefore, the Semitic situation shows that the seeds of
Arabic's loss of case endings were present in Semitic and
Semito-Hamitic times. This seems to be especially true for the generalization of the oblique dual and plural markers, and it may be true for the loss of the singular markers. This evidence suggests that generalization of the dual and plural oblique markers and, possibly, generalization of singular markers were some of the first events to start Arabic on its 51 way to the loss of case distinctions— rather than phonetic factors or language contact which, as described in Section 1.2, have been proposed previously as the original events. 2.2. Cases in Pre-Islamic Arabic 2.2.1. Evidence from Pre-classical Arabic Inscriptions and
Graffiti
A number of pre-classical (often called "proto-Arabic", see footnote 1, Section 2.0) Arabic inscriptions (c.a. 300 B.C.-the 4th century A.D.) which exhibit characteristics of
Arabic have been found north of the Arabian Peninsula (in present-day southern Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq), west of the peninsula (in the Sinai and Egypt), and in the northern part of the peninsula (in the northern gi]âz), according to
Rabin (1960:562-63). These include the Nabataean inscriptions
(100 B.C.-the 4th century A.D.; north of the Arabian
Peninsula) which were written in Aramaic with Aramaic script but exhibit a number of Arabic elements— especially in the later inscriptions, and especially personal names, which show that the Nabataeans were Arab.*
*Honigmann (1936:801) states that the Nabataeans were "an Arab people who lived in ancient times in Arabia Petraea" and that "[t]he capital of the kingdom, called Nabatu in the inscriptions, was Petra on the Diabal Hârün, according to Noldeke fZ.D.M.G.. xxv. 259 sg.)". He explains (p. 802): the Nabataeans were pure Arabs as their names show; but in written intercourse they used Aramaic, the usual written and business language of Nearer Asia. Many aramaisms thus entered their language in the north of the country. . . . Arab writers therefore even used the term 'Nabataean' for 'Aramaic'; in the southern Çigrâ (al-Çidiir) on the other hand, the Nabataean Arabic retained its greatest purity; 52
Pre-classical Arabic writings also include inscriptions and graffiti written in various scripts related to Old South Arabian but exhibiting Arabic names— the Lihyânite inscriptions (the latest dating to 150 A.D.; at al-^Ula),
Thamudic graffiti (300 B.C.-300 A.D; northern gi]âz, Sinai,
Jordan, southern Palestine, Asir, and Egypt), and Safa'itic graffiti (at gafa, garra, and Le]! east of Damascus). Finally, such inscriptions include two written in Nabataean characters "but practically pure Arabic language," according to Rabin (1960:564)— 267 A.D. at Hi]ra in northern Çi]âz, and 328 A.D. at al-Namara. Zwettler (1983) terms the Namâra inscription the first real precursor of Arabic writing since, while using the Nabataean Aramaic characters to represent the
Arabic of the time, it exhibits for the first time the connecting conventions that Arabic script uses between letters.
At least the Nabataean inscriptions exhibit letters which could represent case endings at the ends of a number of nouns.
Diem (1973:229; quoted by Zwettler 1978:149), points out that this is significant for determining when Arabic lost case endings because Aramaic does not preserve such endings even though classical Arabic, Akkadian, and Ugaritic do. However, there are at least three problems in interpreting these letters: determining (1) whether they
the Arabic script developed out of the Nabataean cursive at the close of the ancient period .... 53 represent case endings, (2) whether they represent the spoken language of the time or are remnants of an earlier time
(although in either situation, they still predate CA), and (3) how they relate to the later pre- and early Islamic Arabic dialects to the south. Diem (1973:234; guoted by Zwettler
1978:150-51) concludes that the letters in question in the
Nabataean inscriptions represent case vowels that were
formerly in use in Nabataean Arabic but that had been abandoned by the time of these inscriptions. He concludes further (p. 237; quoted by Zwettler 1978:151, who concurs):
If Nabataean Arabic no longer had a case- inflectional system at such an early period, then it is hard to conceive that the bordering Central Arabic dialects would still have kept the full inflectional system until the Vllth century— i.e., eight centuries longer. Even presuming that peripheral dialects like Nabataean first proceeded to abandon the inflection system, this development has to have involved all Arabic dialects already long before the Vllth century. Only the language of early Arabic poetry preserved the ancient conditions any longer.
These conclusions are certainly intriguing, but they are not necessitated by the evidence, which can really only be used to show what Arabic was like in the Nabataean dialect, or how this dialect might have influenced other dialects and languages it came in contact with. Therefore, it is not clear that these inscriptions have much bearing at all on conclusions about the language of the later Arabic dialects in the Arabian Peninsula (except possibly in terms of language contact, as Corriente 1976 has proposed)— the area of concern
for investigating the loss of case endings in those dialects 54 that were later spread by the Arab conquests. As Rabin (1960:563) sums up, we do not have much early direct evidence for the Arabic in this region: we possess practically no epigraphic material from those areas where either the Eastern or the Western dialects were spoken, and the speech of those regions during the Old Arabic period [the time of the proto-Arabic inscriptions] may have been quite different from the Old Ar. dialects perpetuated by inscriptions. Therefore, we can tell from these inscriptions and graffiti that cases were lost in pre-Islamic times in types of Arabic from neighboring areas. This shows that the case system was unstable in at least some forms of Arabic in pre-
Islamic times. However, these inscriptions do not reveal whether the types of Arabic in the Arabian Peninsula were at the same stage in case loss as the Arabic represented in these inscriptions (for example, Nabataean Arabic) was. 2.2.2. Evidence from Pre- and Earlv Islamic Poetrv
Rabin (1960:565) notes that pre- and early Islamic poetry (c.a. 450-650 A.D., according to Zwettler 1983) is considered to have its origins in dialectal Arabic, whether the dialect of a particular tribe, a combination of dialects, or also containing artificial characteristics. Rabin mentions, for example, that early Muslim traditions considered CA to have been the dialect of various Arab tribes (from central and eastern Arabia), later Muslim traditions said it was the dialect of the Quraysh (Muhammad's tribe), and the medieval
Muslim grammarians of the 2nd-4th centuries A.H. (8th-10th 55 centuries A.D.) as well as most western scholars (at the time Rabin wrote the article) considered it to have originated with the Na]di bedouins, a tribe in central Arabia.
However, Rabin (1955:23) says that most western writers now believe that "Classical Arabic was not the spoken language of the poets. . . .", and he credits J.G. Wetzstein as being the first to propose that CA was different from all ancient dialects. Rabin (1960) says it is clear that the poetic language became a purely literary language, super tribal, and nearly uniform throughout Arabia (with dialectalisms appearing in poetry outside the dialect area) by the late 6th century A.D.; and, therefore, it is often termed the "poetical koine. " However, according to recent research (cf. Zwettler 1978:101; and Ziadeh 1986:333), scholars generally (including
Arab linguists; excluding traditional Muslim scholars) now believe that the poetic manifestation of the Arabic language
(= CA) was never the spoken dialect of any tribe or group but was always a supertribal koiné. developed in pre-Islamic
Arabia for composing and reciting poetry, and molded by the prosodic needs of meter, rhyme, and assonance. Ziadeh
(1986:334) adds that "[t]he base for this language, however, must have been a dialect or dialects located most probably in north and northeast Arabia from where most of the early poets hailed." 56 For many reasons, then, the use of this type of evidence is not entirely straightforward. Rabin (1960:565) cautions that:
It is, however, likely that some regional isms and archaisms in the poems were eliminated by editors, for it is not rare to find that a verse is quoted by a grammarian for some peculiarity which is absent in the dlwan [= 'collection of poems written by one author'] of the poet, the verse being slightly recast. Rabin (1960:565) notes that some researchers reject all pre- Islamic poems as forged— notably: A. Mingana (1920:125), D.S.
Margoliouth (1925:415-19), and faha gusayn (who in al-Adab al- Diahill rejects all but gigazi poetry), and he concludes by observing that if one accepts this opinion, then it would be pointless to try to use this poetry to study Arabic. However, Rabin (1955:21) states that even though any verse or poem might be revised or forged, the pre- and early Islamic poetry is "a first-class source for the study of the pre-Islamic language"— although he cautions (Rabin 1951:4) that this must be done in conjunction with specific statements by the medieval grammarians. Since the medieval grammarians were interested in promoting the "true" classical language, their revisions and forgeries would have eliminated dialectalisms because they deviated from the revered norm. This is the main problem in researching dialectal data— that many dialectal isms have been lost through the revisions of the grammarians. The dialectal isms that remain are most likely true representations 57 of colloquial speech and therefore can be used to gain at least a partial understanding of the dialects of the time.
Zwettler (1983) is even more cautious, noting that when the philologists were collecting poems from the tribal poets
(= raw!) in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. and the poets said the poems were from the 5th century, there was nothing to verify the original time period of the poems or the time period of the language in the poems since they were transmitted orally. Zwettler concludes that, therefore, we do not know whether the language in the poems is pre- or early
Islamic and cannot make judgments about differences in the language from those time periods based solely on the language of the poems. Zwettler (1983) argues, in fact, that the poetic language is actually a mixture of the two time periods, due to the oral method of transmission, which was (1) geared to the audience— and therefore added modern features to pre-
Islamic poems when these aided a particular presentation, and
(2) also very conservative— and therefore preserved archaic usages that worked in a given context, in addition to adding new usages that worked in other contexts. To Zwettler (1983) this does not mean, however, that the poems do not reveal anything useful about the language of the time. He argues that the rarity of short vowel endings in the poems shows that the current spoken language generally did not have final short vowels and thus that case endings were not used in speech then. He also argues that the poetic rhyme, which had to end 58
in a long vowel, necessitated the use of long vowel case endings in poetry but that these were archaic forms from the ancient spoken language, used only because they fit into the poetic structure.
Conclusions drawn from the poetic evidence, then, depend intimately on the assumptions made about the characteristics and authenticity of the poems. Zwettler (1983) has pointed out that poems credited with origins until about 650 A.D. contain many historical allusions that would be hard for later poets to have access to on their own to make up. Therefore, it seems that the poems were not all or substantially fabricated, contrary to the beliefs of some researchers, as mentioned above. In addition, since any literary language— especially that which is transmitted orally— must be based on a spoken language that is near enough in time and features to be understood by the audience, it seems clear that pre- and early Islamic poems can reveal some characteristics of the spoken language they are based on and that this language dates to the time relevant for shedding light on when and how case endings were lost.
The evidence just outlined that has been put forward regarding pre- and early Islamic poetry points to the conclusion that the language of these poems was neither the exact language that was used at the time of poetic composition nor the language that the modern sedentary Arabic dialects evolved from. As stated in Miller (1986b:48), the opposite 59 conclusion— that spoken dialects developed from a language form that was originally used for pre-Islamic poetry— advocated, for example, by Birkeland (1952:7) and by Rabin (1955:26), seems implausible because, as just discussed:
this poetry was a poetry of oral tradition, which means that it was created to fit a specific poetic meter and rhyme and to fit a specific audience. It is questionable whether anyone would, or even could, speak such a formulaic language form outside the context that originally helped create the form (Zwettler 1978:97-106). Therefore, since the evidence suggests that the modern spoken dialects did not develop directly out of the poetic koiné. this means that the hypotheses that advocate this are not credible on this point. However, Zwettler's objection that we cannot determine whether the poems are pre- or early
Islamic Arabic is not a major problem for our purposes since we need to know only what happened to the cases before the Islamic conquests, and the conquests occurred after the beginning of Islam. Therefore, it can be concluded that the time period of the language of the poems was generally before the Islamic conquests and can thus be used to determine characteristics from this general time period. However, as
Rabin cautioned, this must be done judiciously and with the aid of the grammarians' comments, to weed out fabrications.
Finally, Zwettler's conclusion regarding short case vowels in the poems is not a necessary one. It can be argued that the limited use of short case vowels in the poems could also be a poetic convention and so does not necessarily show 60 that case vowels were not used in the speech of the time. On the contrary, it can be argued that any use at all of case vowels in the poems indicates that they were still meaningful to speakers and, therefore, that the case system had not disappeared completely before the Islamic conquests. 2.2.3. Evidence from the Qur'an
Like the language of poetry, the origin and original features of the language of the Qur'an have been the subject of much controversy. The Qur'an was revealed to Mul^ammad as God's words, recited by Muhammad to others, then written down by others between 620 and 640 A.D. Rabin (1955:21) reports that, as with the poetry, the Qur'an has frequent variants which affect grammar; and the philologists also made some revisions in it— notably, inserting hamza (= the letter symbolizing a glottal stop) into the writing, while the original writing represented a pronunciation which had lost the glottal stop. He says that the variants affect only bounded aspects of the Qur'an, however, since the consonantal skeleton has not changed since it was revised in 650 A.D. by
‘^Uthman (the third caliph). Rabin (1960:565) notes that short vowel marks were not part of the text until they were invented much later, and that some of the Qur'lnic spelling conventions differ from those in the literary language today— some being spelling archaisms (for example, not writing 'alif for -â) and others probably showing grammatical differences. He reports further that different types of Qur'lnic recitation (= 61
girâ'ât) differed in pronunciation and interpretation of the
consonantal outline— varying in readings of vowels, in diacritical marks which differentiated consonants whose basic
shapes were identical, and in grammar. He states that some commentators say that some recitations agree with early dialects (citing Hammuda 1948), while other recitations are
similar to the colloquial language of the time. Rabin (1960:566) concludes that the features of the Qur'anic
language are between those of the poetic koiné and the Hi]âzi dialect— a situation that could have arisen in a number of ways, proposed by different scholars over the years.
The different opinions that scholars have expressed about the origins of the Qur'anic language, as well as its relationship to the colloquial Arabic of the time and to poetry, are summed up cogently by Rabin (1955:22-25; 1960:565-
66) and Zwettler (1978:101, lllff.). Rabin (1955:22) notes that medieval Muslim writers thought that the language of the Qur'an was Muljammad's dialect (= the contemporary dialect of
Quraysh), was the best and purest Arabic (and therefore the
Quraysh dialect was the most correct dialect), and that it was basically the same as the poetic language.
The progression of opinions by western scholars is shown by Rabin's (1955:23-25; 1960:565-66) and Zwettler's (1978:101,
lllff.) summaries of the most prominent ones. These include the conclusions that the original Qur'anic language was (1) the dialect of Muhammad— without case endings, as shown in the 62 colloquial-type Qur'ânic recitations, while the canonical
Qur'anic language was a later revision (Vollers 1906; Kahle 1947:78-84; Kahle 1948:163-82; Kahle 1949:65-71); (2) the
dialect of Muhammad— with case endings, since, according to
Noldeke (1910:2), if the Qur'an had originally been recited without them, "the tradition of it [using case endings = 'i*^rab1 would not have been lost without a trace"; (3) the dialect of Muhammad with some revisions to be like the
language of poetry (Brockelmann 1908-13 1:25); and (4) the poetic koiné. with lapses into the Meccan dialect resulting in deviations from the poetic language (Blachère 1947:156-69, 1952 1:66-82; Fleisch 1947:97-101; Rabin 1951:3-4; Zwettler 1978).
As is evident from this variety of opinions about what constitutes the language of the Qur'an, use of this language as evidence for what happened and when in the loss of Arabic case endings is very problematic. It entails, first, an evaluation of the assumptions and arguments put forward by the various camps in order to determine how the Qur'ânic language can be used. Only then can evidence from the Qur'an be adduced to shed light on questions concerning loss of the case endings.
This evidence that has been put forward regarding the
language of the Qur'an points to the conclusion that case endings were not completely lost throughout Arabia in pre- 63
Islamic times (= before the time of Muhammad). As stated in
Miller (1986b:47-48), this conclusion is reached because:
its opposite, advocated by Vollers (1906), entails that the Koran was written without ifrâb [= 'case inflection ' ] and that i*^rab was added later by the [medieval] grammarians (Blau 1977:15; Corriente 1975:38; Fuck 1955:4, footnote 4). This theo^ has been . . . [argued] to be implausible by Noldeke (1904:1-14; 1910:1-5) because the Koran's consonantal skeleton . . . [indicates] that i‘^rab existed, and by Brockelmann (1908-13:1, 460) because deviations in the Koran show that the consonantal text has not been revised (Blau 1977:15).
Therefore, both Vollers' and Kahle's hypotheses, which conclude that case endings were not in spoken Arabic at all at the time of Muhammad, are not credible. 2.3. Cases in Arabic at the Beginning of Islam
2.3.1. Evidence from Medieval Grammarians' Writings
Reports by the medieval Arab grammarians of pre-conquest dialects, Muhammad's speech, and non-standard Arabic in the
Qur'an are written records of spoken characteristics of Arabic around the time of the beginnings of Islam. These began to appear in the mid 8th century A.D. in treatises concerned with how Arabic "should" be spoken in order to ensure that the holy language of the Qur'an would not be corrupted, the earliest main ones being writings of 'Abu '1-Aswad ad-Du'all (d. 69
A.H.) and al-Khalll b. A ^ a d (d.l75 A.H.). A need for this type of study arose apparently because there were many deviations in recitations of the Qur'an and many deviations from CA in the spoken language— especially among the foreigners who were just learning Arabic after they had been 64 conquered. These grammarians sought out Bedouins from remote areas who still reportedly spoke the "pure" form of Arabic, and used them as informants for how Arabic should be spoken.
While recording "pure" Arabic, the grammarians sometimes also noted dialectalisms they heard. However, their recording of dialectalisms was neither systematic nor of much concern to them. Versteegh (1984:9) argues that these writings are a good source of information "that provides us, so to speak, with an eye-witness account" of the early Islamic Arabic language for two reasons. First, he argues (p. 10) that the grammarians would not have gone to the Bedouins to ask how the Arabic language should be spoken if the Bedouins were not still speaking the classical-type language, with inflections and other characteristics which differed from later analytical dialects.5 He says (p. 10) :
^Versteegh equates (pp. 2-4, 11) classical Arabic with Old Arabic (= pre-Islamic dialectal Arabic), and with later Bedouin speech, arguing that these forms were simply different registers of the same language. Regarding CA and Old Arabic, he says (p. 2), "I regard all varieties of Arabic in the pre- Islamic period as one language, comprising— as apparently all languages do— different registers as well as regional varieties. . . . I maintain that the language of the poems was identical with the colloquial of the tribes." Regarding CA and the Bedouin dialects, he says (pp. 4-5), "I agree with those who claim that the Bedouin continued to use the declensional endings for a few centuries after the conquests . . . and only lost them under the increasing influence of sedentary civilization, which changed not only their language, but their entire life style as well." In justifying this position, he states (p. 3): No doubt, the romantic idealization of desert life and Bedouin values current in early Islamic sedentary society played an important role in the 65
The grammarians attempted to solve the problems of the variant readings [of the Qur'an and the poetry (AG-M)] by developing criteria that might help them to select the 'correct' ones from among the multitude of only slightly differing readings. Their most important criterion was the living language, i.e. the language of the pure Bedouin who had not yet been corrupted by contact with the sedentary population.
Second, he says (pp. 10-11) that we either have to call the grammarians liars or accept as true the types of evidence they reported (for example, that Abu ®Amr ibn al-®Ala— who died in 770 A.D.— had to live with the Bedouins for 40 years in order to learn how to speak using case endings). He reasons that it was surely not the case that the grammarians were outright liars because they were working hard to document a form of the language that was very important to them— CA. He states that, therefore, we have to accept their testimonies about the language of the time. He concludes (pp. 10-11): Unless we reject the testimony of the Arab grammarians as a body, we have to accept their judgment about the opposition of pure Bedouin speech to corrupted urban speech. . . . to accept that throughout the first centuries of Islam the Bedouin tribes did indeed preserve the Classical language as it had been spoken before the period of the conquests.
appreciation of Bedouin linguistic purity, but, on the other hand, the testimonies of the grammarians are too explicit to be ignored. In my view, the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn on the basis of the evidence of grammatical literature is that, essentially, the colloquial and the literary language of the Arab tribes, both before the conquests and for a long time afterwards, were identical. 66 While Versteegh is no doubt correct that the writings of the grammarians are a good source for gleaning dialectal
features of the time, Rabin (1951:6-16) advocates more caution
in using them. He discusses a number of limitations these writings have, although he argues that with care they can be helpful. He notes the following. (A) The grammarians collected dialectal data only as a
sideline, so their records probably missed many details and therefore must be used with caution.
(B) The grammarians tended to call all features
dialectal which did not conform to CA rules,
without noting how widespread they really were. (C) The reports of dialectalisms may likely be exaggerated.
(D) The reports often contradict each other. (E) Bedouin informants were often from cities and so
likely had sedentary elements in their speech.
(F) Informants are reported to have provided the
information the grammarians were looking for,
rather than always giving their actual speech. (G) The information is very limited because the
grammarians recorded only words— not full sentences.
(H) Not much information was collected until about 1200 A.D. 67 Because of all these problems with the writings of the Arab grammarians, they must be used very cautiously and knowledgeably.
Without accepting Versteegh's position that CA, Old Arabic, and Bedouin Arabic were virtually the same, his conclusion that the grammarians reported information that is valuable to us is well argued. Of course, the Bedouin language might have differed from CA but have been perceived as being CA because a number of features were similar. Or, as argued by Zwettler (1978:134), the Bedouins might have spoken in the poetical language when they were informants, even though their dialects differed from it. It is not possible to believe, though, that the grammarians would have fabricated all their reports. Therefore, since their writings are the earliest extant sources that recorded anything of the early
Islamic dialects, they can be a valuable source of dialectal information if used very judiciously.
Heeding Rabin's cautions, then, this dissertation uses only reports that have been collected by well-known scholars in the field, relying on their expert judgments to have gleaned reliable information from the grammarians' writings.
This is surely not a foolproof method, but it is the best that can be done given the way the original information was collected and compiled. The reports of deviations and dialectalisms examined here suggest that the western Arabic dialects, which generally pronounced all vowels, may have 68 preserved case endings longer than the eastern dialects, which regularly elided short vowels.
In his Ancient West-Arabian (1951), Chaim Rabin culled meaningful dialectal information from the medieval grammarians' writings, sorting out what he believed to be errors or fabrications, as discussed above. In this seminal work, he not only compiled dialectal data, but he also made conclusions about the phonetic, phonological, and morphological characteristics of the early Islamic dialects whenever it seemed possible to him. While one must acknowledge a great debt to Rabin for the data he collected and the hypotheses he put forth, a review of his conclusions reveals that a variety of phenomena— which he described as the dialect characteristics that can be known from that time— can be understood even better when examined with reference to case endings. A number of them can be explained as due to phonetic or analogic influence from these endings.
Rabin (1951:97) states that in the eastern Arabian dialects, vowels were often changed due to the surrounding phonemes and to stress, while the western dialects had almost no vowel changes. He draws this conclusion by looking at words involving vowel elision (pp. 97-99) and vowel assimilation (pp. 99-102). 69 2.3.2. Vowel Elision The facts concerning vowel elision seem to be beyond question, and they even include a supporting comment of observation by the grammarian 'Abu ‘^Ubaida (d. 210/825) (p. 98, quoted by Suyütl, 'Itqân. p. 220):
The Hijazis [the western tribe which Muhammad belonged to (AG-M) ] give full weight to every sound fvufakhkhimflna l-kalama kullahu), except for %shra "10" which they shorten fvaizimunahul. The Najdis [an eastern tribe (AG-M) ] do not give full weight to sounds fvatrukuna t-tafkhlma fl l-kalami) except in this one word, which they pronounce fashira.
Even though Rabin (p. 98) points out that comparative evidence shows that the gijazi %shra is the form that is the continuation of the proto-Semitic word for ' ten', while the Na]di form has an anaptyctic vowel, the point of this quote still holds— that this western dialect generally pronounced all vowels while this eastern dialect generally elided vowels.
In addition, Rabin (p. 97) notes that the grammarians often specifically stated that the forms of words which had all the vowels were Hi]âzi. Rabin (p. 97) concludes that Arabic in western Arabia "preserves the fuller forms found in cognate languages, such as Canaanite and Ethiopie." Table 4 lists the forms cited by Rabin as showing vowel elision in eastern dialects but not in western dialects. 70
Table 4
Vowel Elision in East and West Arabian Dialects
(cited by Rabin 1951: 97-98)
ÇA Hinazi Eastern Meaning Page
fi^il fi'l [word form] 97 fu*^ul fu®l [word form] 97
fa^il fa'l [word form] 97
faful fa'l [word form] 97 fafila fa^la [word form] 97
fa^ila fu‘=la/ [word form] 97 fù'la kalima kilma 'word' 97 saduqa suduqa/ sudqa 'dowry• 97 saduqa
fakhidh fikhdh •thigh* 97 ®a^ud =u3d • elbow• 97
®unq ®unuq • neck• 97
311= 3ila= •rib' 97 husn husun •beauty* 97 mathalat mathalat mathlat 98
sudaqat guduqat ^udqat •dowries• 98
n imamat ni^imat ni'inlt 98
2.3.3. Vowel Assimilation
However, the facts Rabin found concerning vowel assimilation are troublesome, as even he admits. He cites evidence that: 71
(A) the eastern dialects had vowel harmony (which he
defines as assimilation of unstressed short vowels
to stressed ones) but that the Hi]âz did not (p. 99) ; (B) where gijazis pronounced u around guttural or
uvular consonants, eastern dialects pronounced a
(p. 100) ;
(C) however, where Hijazis pronounced i around guttural
or uvular consonants, eastern dialects almost never pronounced a (pp. 100-101); (D) sometimes Najdis even pronounced i for a around
back consonants (p. 101); (E) where gijazis pronounced i around guttural, uvular,
or emphatic consonants, usually in the environment
of labials, eastern dialects pronounced u (p. 101) ; and
(F) the Hijazis sometimes pronounced u around labial
consonants, where Classical Arabic had a (p. 101).
Taken by itself, the evidence for hypotheses A, E, and F supports the conclusions— that eastern dialects had vowel harmony of unstressed vowels to stressed ones but the Çijâz did not, that eastern dialects labialized i around labial consonants, and that the Çijâz sometimes labialized a around labials. However, the evidence suggests that (1) the gijaz had some vowel harmony of unstressed vowels and (2) the evidence for hypotheses B, C, and D is problematic. 72
Hypothesis B suggests that the eastern dialects generally backed (and lowered) u to a around back consonants, but C suggests that they rarely backed and lowered i to a, and D suggests that they sometimes even fronted and raised a to i around back consonants. Rabin (pp. 100-101) remarks that this inconsistency in the eastern treatment of i and u is strange and that further data is needed to resolve it. While further data always provides a more complete picture of any phenomenon under investigation, a re-examination of all this evidence suggests that there are also other conclusions that could be drawn which would not render some of the conclusions inconsistent with some of the data. In addition, these alternate conclusions would also provide a fuller explanation for another body of data examined by Rabin (pp. 105-111) — words which end in -waw in Arabic manuscripts, also discussed below. Table 5 lists the data on vowel assimilation cited by Rabin. 73
Table 5
(cited by Rabin 1951:99-102)
I. EASTERN VOWEL HARMONY (NOT HIJÂZI) TO STRESSED VOWELS ÇA Hiiazi Eastern Meaning Page fu^alâ fa®ala [word form] 99 ra'l ri'l •familiar spirit* 99 ba^ir bicir • camel• 99 fa'=ll fi'=Il [word form] 99 fa-,wa-/_'i fi-,wi- •and' 99 'arOma 'urüma •origin* 99 hisad hasad •harvest• 99 bi-ghulamihl bi-ghulâmihü 99 bi-hl wa bi- bi-hü wa bi- •upon him and 99 dlrihl dârihü his horse*
II. EASTERN a AND HIJÂZI u AROUND BACK Cs:
Hiiazi Tamlmi Meaning Page
‘^uqru d-dari ‘^aqru d-dari •main part of 100 the house* yafrughu yafraghu •he is at rest* 100 luhd lahd •grave-niche• 100 rufgh rafgh • armpit• 100 shuhd shahd •unrefined honey* 100 juhd jahd •effort' 100 zuhw zahw •dates turning 100 yellow* yajnuhu yajna&u •he inclines* 100 bukhl bakhl • avarice• 100 duff eacf •weakness* 100 74
Table 5 (continued)
^udud ‘^a^ud/^add 'upper arm' 100
^ujuz ®ajuz 'posterior' 100
THE OPPOSITE ALSO OCCURRED: za III. ALMOST NO EASTERN a AND ÇIJAZI i AROUND BACK Cs; Hiiazi Taml mi Meanina Page na^im na^am 'yes' 100 •ikhdh 'akhdh 'INF of 'akhadha 101 = to take' THE OPPOSITE ALSO OCCURRED: lahya li&ya 'beard' 101 nahy nihy 'rainpool' 101 hajj hijj 'pilgrimage' 101 qarri ®ainan qirri ®ainan 'be at rest' 101 za'in zi^m 'INF of za'^ama 101 = to claim' IV. EASTERN U AND ÇIJAZI i AROUND BACK Cs AND LABIALS : Hiiazi Tamlmi Meanina Page mifhaf mushaf 'codex' 101 gidwa qudwa 'model' 101 qinwan qunwan 'cluster of dates' 101 qinyân qunyan 'cluster of dates' 101 qibilan qubulan 'face to face' 101 sikhriyyan sukhriyyan 'in slavery' 101 ri^wan ru^wan 'goodwill' 101 qinya qunwa 'flocks' 101 75 Table 5 (continued) ®idwa “^udwa 'peer' 101 *^ishwa ®ushwa 'firebrand' 101 ^iswa *^uswa 'model' 101 mirya murya 'doubt' 101 THE OPPOSITE ALSO OCCURRED; *^udwa “^idwa 'model' 101 V. HIJÂZI u FOR CA a: CA Hiiazi Meanina Page lama luma 'redness of 101 the lips' samm summ 'poison* 102 VI. ÇIJÂZI HAS ONE u UNEXPLAINED BY SURROUNDING SOUNDS: CA Hiiazi Meaning Page dhikr dhukr 'INF of dhakara 102 = to remember ' 2.3.4. Vowel Harmony and Vowel Preservation fincluding case vowels) Since the data concerning the eastern dialects' use of a for u around back consonants but i for a in the same environment are problematic, it is possible that something besides backing or in addition to backing was occurring. Notice that these data suggest that the gi]âzi dialect had some vowel harmony of unstressed vowels, as evidenced by the pronunciations listed in Table 6, cited by Rabin (1951:97- 98) only to show that this dialect had forms with full vowels. 76 Table 6 Hiiâzi FuII-Vowel Forms Which Exhibit Vowel Harmony (cited by Rabin 1951:97-98) Hiiazi Other W. Eastern Meanina Page ‘•unuq ®unq 'neck' 97 suduqa/saduqa gudqa 'dowry' 97 &usun &usn 'beauty' 97 mathalat mathlat 98 suduqat gudaqat sudqat 'dowries' 98 ni^imat n imamat ni%at 98 If, indeed, there could have been vowel harmony in these gi]âzi words, it is reasonable to assume that there was also vowel harmony in some other gi]âzi words or environments. When this hypothesis is considered, it turns out that all of Rabin's examples of eastern a for u around back consonants can be explained, alternatively, as gi]âzi u for a due to rounding in vowel harmony with the nominal or verbal -u, if -u was still present in the gijazi nouns listed in Table 5, Section II (as it was still cited in the verbs). This explanation is consistent with the fact, discussed above, that the gi]âzi dialect was known for preserving, rather than eliding, vowels. 77 Also, examples of this type of assimilation— vowel harmony to a following vowel^— occur in more than one Semitic language. In Egyptian, Birkeland (1952:12) notes that bëtak < *bët-a-kS ('house-ACC-your-M.SG') and betik < *bët-i-kï ('house-GEN-your-F.SG') occur, and he states that in the former "it is the accusative which is preserved [before the -k suffix (AG-M)], in . . . [the latter] it is the genitive. The fact than an old case-ending appears as an auxiliary vowel is well-known." In Akkadian, Moscati (1969:57) notes that regressive partial vowel assimilation occurs: "e.g. . . . uhappi 'he struck' > uheppi." For Assyrian and Arabic, he states: A typical case of regressive total assimilation occurs in Assyrian vowel harmony whereby a is assimilated to the vowel of a case-ending which follows it: e.g. nom. aaacmdu 'head', gen. qaaaidi. acc. aaaaada; cf. also Ar. imru'"" 'man', imri' imra'^". Furthermore, in such a situation in which the Hi]âzi dialect rounded a in vowel harmony with the following -u, the eastern dialects would not have backed u to a in these words, suggesting that they did not have widespread phonological backing of vowels to become a around back consonants. Therefore, the widespread absence of a for i around back consonants in eastern dialects is also accounted for in a straightforward manner. The absence of u occurring for a in *As Moscati (1969:57) notes, "Assimilation of vowels (or vowel harmony) is always at distance [sic], since the structure of the Semitic syllable does not admit vowels in positions of direct contact. ..." 78 the eastern dialects— contrary to what the argument here suggests it did in the gi]âz— suggests that the eastern dialects either did not still have case (and mood?) markers for their stem vowels to harmonize with, or that there was much less vowel harmony in these dialects than has been proposed. The vowel harmony evidence cited by Rabin (p. 99) argues against the latter explanation since his examples show vowel harmony occurring even in the environment of guttural consonants which would otherwise result in backing of the vowel. Therefore, Rabin's vowel harmony evidence also suggests that backing was not a very strong phonological process in the eastern dialects, providing support for the thesis advanced here. And since vowel harmony was so strong in the eastern dialects but these dialects did not change a to u in harmony with case (and mood?) vowels as the Hi]âz dialect did, then this is evidence that the eastern dialects did not have case (and mood?) vowels at this time. This coincides with the evidence cited above that the eastern dialects had widespread elision of unstressed vowels, suggesting these dialects had already elided the short case (and mood?) vowels. In addition, the four eastern i for a "exceptions" can be explained either as (1) due to vowel harmony in the eastern dialects (the first vowel assimilating to the second vowel in eastern nihv for nahv— where y = [1 ]— and airrl ^ainan for qarri ^ainan); (2) instances where the vowels varied a lot 79 across the dialects, thus not reflecting the existence of any particular phonological process at all (Qais zi^Tii against Hi]âzi z a % . for which Lane (1863-93:1232) notes that some of the Qais said zifm, ÿlgâzis said zafm, and the Bani Asad or Bani Tamlm said zufm) ; or (3) either assimilation of the vowel to the following consonant, or differentiation in meaning accomplished by differentiation in vowels— thus showing nothing about any phonological process fhiii for )iaii due to closing the mouth more in anticipation of pronouncing the approximated consonant, or the form with i meaning 'performance of the religious rites of pilgrimage for one year = a single pilgrimage' and the form with a meaning 'all the religious rites of the pilgrimage', both cited by Lane (1863- 93:514), as said by some people to be a differentiation in meaning that was used). In such a scenario, there is an explanation for Rabin's puzzling instances of eastern a alongside western i (nafam against na^im, and 'akhdh against 'ikhdh) as well as for the instance of eastern i against western a flihva against lahya). The explanation is that these words exhibit eastern retention of the original vowel (possibly with former backing of the a's in assimilation with the back consonant) and western assimilation of the vowel to the following consonant (the first two would be closing the mouth more in anticipation of pronouncing the closed or approximated consonant; and the last would be backing in anticipation of the back consonant). 80 Even though these explanations are not as concise as citing the presence of backing in the East vs. its absence in the West as creating the differences in all these words, these explanations are more probable than Rabin's because such a situation, which includes only a few instances of a phenomenon or a few exceptions, would more likely be created not by a widespread phonological process but by several different processes which happened to create a common result. 2.3.5. Related Phenomena Accepting that case (and mood?) vowels were used in the Hi]âz at this time also provides a related explanation for three other phenomena which have been noted previously but have not been discussed as related. These are: (1) the Qur'ânic spelling with -waw (generally = w or 0/5) for 'alif (generally = a) in all nouns ending in â plus ta' marbOta (= the feminine singular ending -a(t); cf. Rabin 1951:105-114), listed in Table 5; (2) the Prophet Muhammad's pronunciation of hi8a'-u without the long vowel or glottal stop and ending in - waw (generally = w or 0/5; of. Wright 1974 [1896] : 12n. *) ; and (3) Hi]âzi pronunciations using waw in place of word final 'alif. noted by the medieval grammarians and compiled by Lane (1863-93) and Rabin (1951). 2.3.5.1. Spellings/Pronunciations with Waw for 'Alif Rabin (1951:105) notes that in the Qur'an, most old codices, and works on Qur'ânic spelling, all nouns with â before tâ' marbO^a (= the feminine singular ending -a(t)) were 81 spelled with waw (generally = w or 0/5) for 'alif (= â) when they did not have suffixes. He says that the vowel indicated by this waw was final and stressed since Arabic words are spelled as if in absolute pause, in which the t of the tâ ' marbuta disappears, and that, according to accounts of the taiwld (= 'art of reciting the Qur'an') works, this vowel was pronounced as 5, not as aw. These nouns are listed in Table 7. He states, on the other hand, that these nouns were spelled with 'alif in some Kufic codices (cf. Noldeke 1909-38 iii:41), usually in later Arabic, and in the Qur'an when they had [personal] suffixes, indicating that this vowel was pronounced more like â when a suffix was attached. The later usual spelling with 'alif seems also to indicate that the spelling was later normalized to conform to what the grammarians said the word forms should be. 82 Table 7 Our 'ânic Nouns Soelled with Wâw for 'Alif (cited by Rabin 1951:105) CA Soellina® Qur'ânic Soellina^ Meanina galah §alühf 'prayer' hayâh hayüh® 'life' zakâh zakühf 'alms' najâh najüh 'deliverance' ghadâh ghadüh 'morning' mishkâh mishkühd 'lamp-niche' manâh manüh 'goddess Manât' ar-ribâ ar-ribül® 'usury' ®Here, â = 'alif. h = tâ' marbüta. ^ere, ü = wâw. h = tâ' marbüta. â = 'alif. CRabin observes that this word was borrowed from Aramaic. ‘*Rabin states that this word was borrowed from Ethiopie. ®Rabin notes that this word is slightly different but undergoes essentially the same processes as the other words listed here. In discussing these words, Rabin (1951:105-109) argues persuasively that the waw represents an o pronunciation present in Arabic for words of this type at this time. He says (p. 106): There is no reason to think that other words of the same time, such as ahazah ['invasion, attack, raid' (Wehr 1976[1961]:673)], raiâh ['hope, anticipation' (Wehr 1976[1961]:330)], would have been treated differently had they occurred in the Koran (this is the view of Barth, Nominalbildung, p. 409). Since some of the words enumerated are Arabic, we cannot 83 argue that the 5 represents a foreign sound in . . [the borrowed words, see Table 7 (AG-M)], especially as in non-Koranic Arabic all these words are treated exactly alike. Rabin ascribes (p. 107) this pronunciation to the sound change a > o (often known as the "Canaanite Shift") which had already occurred in Canaanite, Hebrew, Phoenician, Western Syriac, Northern Palestinian, and Egyptian. Furthermore, Rabin notes (p. 107) that the pre-classical Arabic inscriptions also exhibited this same â > 5 shift in some words, the Nabataean Arabic inscriptions often using waw where 'alif would be expected in Arabic names as well as in Aramaic words, and the other Pre-classical Arabic inscriptions also sometimes using wâw where 'alif would be expected. Finally, Rabin also quotes (p. 106) the medieval grammarian Ibn Mangür (d. 711/1311) as stating in the Lisan a 1-^Arab (xv, 347) that this phenomenon existed: Tafkhim in letters is the opposite of ' imâla [= pronouncing â as ë; prevented when in contact with uvular or emphatic consonants (cf. Slbawaihi ii:285, cited by Rabin 1951:111)]. 'Alif at- tafkhlm is the sound between â and u, which one sometimes hears in salomun *^alaikum and ooma zaidun. This is why salah. zakâh. and havâh are written with wâw. because the â in these words inclines towards u. These citations provide support the claim that this Qur'ânic spelling notation was not just a convention but represented something about actual pronunciation. However, one question remains: How does the "Canaanite Shift" of every â to g in the NW Semitic languages mentioned above account for the â > ô changes just at the ends of these 84 Arabic (SW branch of Semitic) words? Since these words were not all borrowed, since scholars believe that other native Arabic words of this type would have been pronounced the same way as these, and not every 5 > 5 in Arabic, an explanation with a more limited domain would account for the Arabic facts in a more direct manner. In fact, there is another explanation for the origin of this Arabic ô for a pronunciation that would account for the pronunciations represented in Table 7 in the same manner as those represented in Tables 5 and 6— as rounding due to assimilation with a following case vowel. This explanation is that a penultimate â was rounded in vowel harmony to a following u in the word-final syllable. When the nouns listed in Table 7 did not have personal suffixes, so that â was in the penultimate syllable and the case vowel followed it in the word-final syllable, â was rounded to [5] when the case marker was nominative -u, in vowel harmony with it. The nominative - u then may (in context) or may not (in pause) have been pronounced, but the written version of the word reflected the pausal pronunciation (e.g., gala-t-ufn^ > salo-t-ufn) > [salo] in pause— where the indefinite and case markers and the feminine t were not pronounced). However, when the nouns in Table 7 had personal suffixes attached, â was not rounded to 5 because it was not in the penultimate position. In this situation, the suffixes changed the placement of â in the word, except for the ISG suffix which would not cause rounding 85 anyway because it is -1 rather than the triggering vowel -u (e.g., ISG salâ-t-î. 2M.SG salâ-t-u-ka. 2F.SG salâ-t-u-ki. 3M.SG salâ-t-u-hu. 3F.SG galâ-t-u-hâ. IPL salâ-t-u-nâ. 2PL salâ-t-u-kum. 3PL salâ-t-u-huml. Sound changes are sometimes sensitive to syllable structure^, and so this type of change would have produced a limited â to 5 change in Arabic which occurred only in the environment where it is attested. Furthermore, as cited by Moscati (1969:57), Akkadian shows that long vowels can assimilate to short vowels in the Semitic languages: "Akk. hiblatu 'damage* > hibletu." Since the Qur'an was first recited by a speaker of the Hi]âzi dialect (Muhammad) and so likely contained Hijlzi dialectalisms, this hypothesis corresponds well with the argument in Section 2.3.4 that the gi]âzi dialect retained case vowels at least until early Islamic times and that these vowels influenced the pronunciation of preceding vowels in some words. This hypothesis also explains pronunciations and spellings of other words at this time in which penultimate â was pronounced or spelled as aw or 5. These are discussed in Sections 2.3.5.2 and .3. 2.3.5.2. Pronunciation/Spelling of Nouns Ending in -a'u M.J. DeGoeje reports in Wright (1974[1896]:12n.*) that Zamakhsharl (1324 i:114) said the Prophet Muhammad's ^According to Hock (1976:215), for example, Karelian dropped final -n only in the second syllable after the accented syllable, but not in the syllable immediately following the accented syllable. 86 pronunciation of hiSâ'-u was [hiiôaw] ; that is, without the long vowel or glottal stop, and ending in -wâw (generally = w or 0/5). Also, as discussed by Rabin (1951:110), citing Noldeke (1909-38 iii:47), a number of nouns ending in -a'u (without personal suffixes) are written as ending in wâw (represented here by w) + 'alif (represented here by â) in old Qur'ânic codices. Rabin cites du*^afâ'-u 'weak ones' and 'anbâ'-u 'news', written as du^^afwâ and 'anbwâ. and mentions that more are given in Vollers (1906:103). Rabin argues that while Bergstrasser (Sprachatlas: 22^ suggests this spelling stands for -âwu (with the final 'alif "guarding" the wâw before it from being read as wa 'and'— a common convention), such a solution would be contrary to the normal Qur'ânic system of writing words in their pausal forms. He notes that the pausal pronunciation of -â'u would be [â] since the glottal stop was elided in the gi]âz, and case vowels were not pronounced in pause. As with nouns ending in 'alif + tâ' marbüta. he argues that the wâw in these words represents -â, standing for the pronunciation [5], with the 'alif being a "guarding" 'alif. Therefore, these words would have been pronounced [^u'^afo] and [ ' anbo]. He notes (p. 110), however, that words ending in -â'u were written with an 'alif rather than a wâw when they had personal suffixes, because they had "generally coincided with the -â(-âh) class"— that is, the glottal stop had already disappeared in the Hi]âzi 87 dialect (e.g., he cites Noldeke 1909-38 iii:46 as reporting that 'auliva'uhum 'their associates' was written 'aulivahum). As with Rabin's accounts of the data discussed in Section 2.3.5.1, this argumentation stops short of explaining how 1 became [5] only when in the penultimate syllable or why it remained â when the word had an attached suffix. Obviously, the same explanation proposed in Section 2.3.5.1 accounts for this data as well: penultimate â rounded to [5] in vowel harmony with the nominative case marker -u, the intervening consonant (here, a glottal stop) dropped (this could presumably have happened either first or second), and -5 was left as the last sound in the word (e.g., du^afâ '-u > du*^af5f')-u > [^u'^afo], and *anbâ'-u > 'anbof')-u > ['anbo]). For purposes of explaining how the last vowel of these words became something other than a, it does not matter whether the sound changed to was [5] or [au/w]. In the same way, the prophet Muhammad's reported pronunciation of hi8&'-u as [hiôâw] could be considered to actually have been [hiôô] and to have followed the changes just outlined. Alternatively, it could also be accounted for by a slight variation of this explanation, in which the glottal stop was elided, and the resulting sequence -a-u was pronounced [aw]: hiSa'-u > hiag-u > [^iôaw]. Whichever order the first two steps took, the reported pronunciation or spelling can be accounted for as rounding in vowel harmony with the nominative case vowel. This pronunciation therefore 88 provides another argument for the presence of case vowels at this time in the gi]âz. The fact that all these words retained the a when they had personal suffixes attached would be explained as in Section 2.3.5.1— that the rounding occurred only when â was in the penultimate syllable, followed by -u in the final syllable. When the suffixes were added, a was no longer in the penultimate syllable, and so it retained its original pronunciation. 2.3.5.3. Other Reported Pronunciations of Waw for 'Alif The third type of evidence that is explained in terms of the theory presented in this section (2.3.5) and therefore supports the theory adduced in Section 2.3.3 is pronunciations of "the [final = added by Lane] *alif being changed into waw in [a couple of] words in the dial, of El-Hijaz . . . ." (Lane 1863-93:2421), also reported elsewhere for Muhammad and/or the gi]âzi dialect. In addition to the words discussed in Sections 2.3.5.1 and .2 in which waw was written as 'alif in words ending in CA in ta ' marbflta and -i'u, these few pronunciations in which word final 'alif was changed into waw may also derive their impetus from rounding in vowel harmony with the nominative case vowel -u. Table 8 lists the examples I have found. 89 Table 8 Hiiâzi Pronunciations of Waw for Word Final 'Alif CA Spelling Reported Meaning Pronunciations h(i/a Ida'f-atlf-un)* [huduww ( -un) ] *’, •a type of bird' [&udayyaa]c 'afCaf-n)d [ 'af^aw]®, 'serpent, viper' [ 'uf®uww(-un) ŸI [ 'af®ai]9 ®Lane (1863-93:526) reports that different authorities cited [i] or [a] as the correct pronunciation of the first vowel but that [i] was "the more approved pronunciation." He reports also that the accepted pronunciation was variously with and variously without the ta ' marbüta (-at). ^Reported by Lane (1863-93:526) as "occurring in a trad, in conjunction with 'uf®uww-un [for 'af®an = added by Lane] . . . of the dial, of the people of Mekkeh." ^Reported by Lane (1863-93:526) as "said . . . to be an erroneous form of the word, used by the people of El-Hijaz . ‘*1 follow Rabin (1951:115ff. ) in using a to symbolize 'alif maasüra. a letter often used in Arabic to indicate [-1]. 'Alif maasura has the same form as the letter va*. which indicates [y] or [I]. ^Reported by DeGoeje in Wright (1974[1896]I:12n.*), quoting Zamakhsharl (1324 i:114). ^Reported by Lane (1863-93:2421) as "occurring in a trad., in which it is said that there is no harm in the killing of the * uf®uww and the huduww ['a type of bird'] by the muhrim ['Mecca pilgrim who has entered the state of ritual consecration' (Wehr 1976[1961]:172)], the [final] (= added by Lane) 'alif being changed into waw in both of these words in the dial, of El-Hijaz." ^Argued by Rabin (1951:116), following Sibawaihi (ed. Derenbourg 1881-89 ii:349), to be the gigazi pronunciation. 90 It seems likely that the first listed pronunciation of h [y/o] in harmony with the case marker -u, the assimilated to the surrounding [u]s— becoming [w], and the [w] was emphasized— becoming [ww]. Then, since 'af=al-n1 occurred in the same saying as ][iuduww-lun\ (see note f in Table 8), the former changed by analogy to the latter: hii/alda'l-un) : [huduww(-un) ] : : 'af^al-n) : X, = ['uf'^uww(-un) ]. The first pronunciation listed for 'af^al-nl — ['af'^aw]— could have been derived easily from ['uf^uww(-un) ] if the Hijazis reanalyzed the word as consisting of the consonants '-f-'^-w. and then used the different vowel patterns f-a-a- or -u-u-) at different times. The other two pronunciations— [hudayyaa] and ['af*^ai] — can both be explained as part of the process that Rabin (1951:115-119) argues for to explain the orthography of writing à (the same symbol used to represent 1 or y, see note d in Table 8) for zE in some nouns. He argues (p. 117) that - â was pronounced with ' imala (= > [ë]) in West Arabian dialects and that every %a in the Qur'an must have stood for [-ai] or else one would have to say that Qur'anic orthography 91 was anarchy. If one accepts this explanation, *af°a > ['af*^ai] follows straightforwardly; and hfi/alda'f-at)f-un) > [hudayyaa] would have resulted from reinterpreting the - a'(at)- as -ayy(at), and then pronouncing the first vowel as [u] by analogy with the other forms of the word which had [u] for at least the first vowel. While the pronunciations cited in this section do not provide as neat an argument as those in the two previous sections, they do require some type of explanation which must account for every [u] and [w]. In conjunction with the arguments in the previous sections, the explanations offered here seem plausible and add weight to the argument that case vowels were still used in the gi]âz at the time of the Prophet Muhammad. 2.4. Conclusions As described in Section 2.0, the available evidence pertaining to the use of case markers before the Arab conquests, while numerous in type, is scanty and limited in quantity. However, each of the types of evidence reveals something about this topic. The Semitic evidence indicates that since all the Semitic languages did something to generalize their oblique dual and plural case endings (-ayni and -Ina, respectively), as well as losing or reducing the number of their singular case endings, such changes were internal Semitic language changes. Thus, generalization of the dual and plural oblique endings would 92 have been a "drift" phenomenon in the Semitic languages, due to variation in the case markers the languages all inherited from their common ancestor. Furthermore, the diachronic evidence from all the Semitic languages indicates that the direction of leveling of these endings was determined by the frequency of occurrence of each case, the instances of oblique endings outnumbering the instances of nominative endings, and so being generalized to all positions over time. The evidence also suggests that loss of singular case markers may have been a drift phenomenon, as well, although even though the latest languages of each Semitic branch have all lost these endings, they are not unanimous in making the same types of changes with these as they are with the dual and plural endings. Zwettler (1978:134-35), while discussing case endings in Arabic, has also observed that the loss of the singular endings is a general Semitic phenomenon, saying: the disappearance [in Arabic (AG-M)] of final short vowels corresponds to a . . . profound process of linguistic evolution through which other Semitic languages had already passed at a much earlier period. . . . [which (AG-M)] represents a normal linguistic development for Semitic languages in general. The evidence of the same trends at work in the case systems of all the Semitic languages suggests that earlier variation in Semitic was very important in Arabic's loss of case endings, starting Arabic out with variations in its case system which were to be resolved later by further changes in the system in order to reduce the number of variations. The 93 role of the Islamic conquests in the loss of Arabic's case endings is thus shown not to have been the only factor, or necessary, in causing Arabic to lose these endings (although since the conquests happened, they certainly played a role in the loss). Rather, the phenomena considered here suggest that generalization of the dual and plural oblique markers and, possibly, generalization of the singular markers were some of the first events to begin Arabic's loss of case distinctions. Phonetic factors or language contact during the Islamic conquests, which have been proposed previously as initiating the loss of Arabic case endings— as described in Section 1.2, are therefore shown not to have been the first factors in this process. Rather, loss of case distinctions had its origins in Semitic and ran through to completion in Arabic, as in all the Semitic languages. The four types of written evidence considered in this chapter (from pre-classical Arabic inscriptions and graffiti, from pre- and early Islamic poetry, from the Qur'an, and from writings of the medieval Arab grammarians) also provide further details about the timing of the loss of case endings in different dialect areas. This evidence suggests, contrary to some of the previous proposals discussed in Section 1.2, that at least some case endings were retained until the beginning of Islam, most likely in western Arabia. However, in agreement with some of the proposals outlined in Section 94 1.2, the evidence suggests, also, that other dialects had probably lost case endings by this time. All this evidence therefore points to the conclusion that the loss of Arabic's case endings was more gradual and diverse in location than any of the previous hypotheses on the loss of case endings has recognized. Therefore, what evidence we do have from pre-Islamic times suggests that (1) case markers were in use with some low-level variations from the earliest times we are able to discuss— as suggested by reconstructions of Proto-Semitic along with the same types of changes and loss of these endings exhibited by the daughter languages; (2) that they began to be generalized and lost in ancient times in all the Semitic languages— as suggested by research on these languages and by Pre-classical Arabic inscriptions; but (3) that they were still in use in some dialects of Arabic at/or around the time of the Prophet Mu&ammad— as shown by pre- and early Islamic poetry, the Qur'an, and medieval grammarians' reports of pre- conquest dialects, of Muhammad's speech, and of non-standard Arabic in the Qur'an. Finally, the evidence from the reports of the medieval grammarians suggests some new information about Old Arabic dialects. It suggests that the Hi]âzi dialect had some vowel harmony and that penultimate â was rounded to 5 in vowel harmony with the nominative case ending -u. The existence of these phenomena in gi]âzi Arabic explains some otherwise 95 troubling comparisons of this dialect with the Eastern dialects and, furthermore, shows that the Eastern dialects did not have a very strong phonological process of backing vowels around back consonants. Finally, the phenomena examined here suggest that case vowels were in use in Hi]âzi Arabic but not in the eastern Arabic dialects at this time. CHAPTER III EVIDENCE FROM MUSLIM MIDDLE ARABIC 3.0. Introduction Chapter III examines evidence from published versions of Muslim Middle Arabic papyri^ (22 A.H.-the 4th century A.H., with most from the 3rd century A.H., according to Hopkins [1984:xli]) for the insights these texts provide about the use of case endings at this time. Specifically, this chapter examines evidence from those Muslim Middle Arabic papyri which have been adduced by Blau (1981:123-32) and Hopkins (1984) to reveal— through deviations from CA— linguistic characteristics of spoken Arabic during the first centuries of Islam. This is a different kind of evidence from that examined in Chapter II since it is the earliest body of Arabic writings we have that are intact from the time they were written down. According to Hopkins (1984:xliii), unlike most other corpora of written Arabic, most of the papyri have never been recopied: Whereas a great deal of CA literature has been edited, revised and embellished for the edification of posterity, copied and recopied to satisfy a constant demand, and is available only in ^See Chapter I, Section 1.3.2.1 for an overview of Middle Arabic texts. 96 97 comparatively late MSS., the papyri represent a corpus of original documents. With the probable exception of some of the literary papyri, none of this material has been rewritten or recopied, and may therefore be accepted without misgiving as directly representative of the Arabic language at the time at which it was written, free from later editorial interference of any kind. Therefore, these writings may be not only our earliest but also our best evidence of the actual native language in early Islamic times. Hopkins (1984:xl) goes so far as to call this corpus "the most important . . . class of documentary material which has survived from the early centuries of Islam." He describes (p. xlii) the early Arabic papyri and papers as follows: Literary papyri, Quran, poetry, hadlth, grammar etc., though in extent sometimes quite substantial, are in number relatively few; the great bulk of the extant material is of a documentary character, represented by business and private letters, legal deeds, marriage contracts, administrative surveys, economic lists and registers, passports, petitions, tax-receipts, demands for payment etc. Furthermore, this is a substantial corpus. Hopkins (1984:xl-xli), using estimates reported by Grohmann (1952:2), states that Middle Eastern, European, and United States libraries contain some 16,000 Muslim MA papyri. Hopkins says that in addition there exist about "33,000 items written on paper, as well as several hundreds of texts written on materials such as leather, parchment, linen, and wood. . . . also . . . a large corpus of early coins and inscriptions, and, to a lesser extent, inscribed glassweights, marble slabs, ostraca, etc." 98 Furthermore, since the earliest of these texts were written very soon after Muhammad's death, they are, as Blau (1961:220) notes, "practically contemporary evidence" of the language at the time of the Islamic conquests— the exact time period that the main controversy concerning the timing of the loss of case endings revolves around. Even though Blau (1961:207) cautions that "the tremendous influence which °arabiwa [= CA] as an ideal exerted, as it still does, on Moslem authors, meant that their writings did not, until relatively late, reflect decisive changes in the character of the language to any marked degree," the dialectalisms which do occur in these texts represent a direct continuation of CA. Blau (1961:220) states this when he says, "the papyri contain some few deviations from Classical usage. These suffice for establishing the main features of Middle Arabic." By "Middle Arabic" he means (p. 106) the vernacular, which he then identifies as "the intermediate stage between Classical and Modern Arabic. ..." Hopkins (1984:xlii) concurs that the papyri reveal native Arabic usage of the time when he states, "with few exceptions, . . . the early Arabic papyri and papers are of Muslim origin." Because of the greater possibility of deducing actual dialectal Arabic from these texts than from the other types of evidence we have (discussed in Chapter II), evidence from them is examined in Chapter III in detail. The evidence from them suggests, as Hopkins (1984:155) mentions, that case vowels 99 were used sometimes before pronoun suffixes and that the nominative dual marker -ani and the nominative masculine plural marker -üna were used sometimes. Both Hopkins (1984) and Blau (1966-67, 1981) treat these facts as slight deviations among many instances which show no signs of case endings in the written texts. They conclude that there is an overall pattern in these papyri which reveals a spoken language which did not have a case system. From the papyri Blau examined, he concluded (1981:126) that "[t]here are only a few indications of the disappearance of the case endings; these, however, suffice to show that even the copyists of the earliest papyri spoke a language devoid of declension." Hopkins did an extensive search for all the papyri he could find, and he concluded (1984:155) from the total corpus that " [w] ith certain minor exceptions . . . it is quite clear that the language treated in this study was characterized by the absence of a case-system. ..." Further examination of the evidence from these Muslim Middle Arabic documents suggests that they contain some additional instances of case markers beyond those Hopkins (1984) mentioned, and that many of these instances are in recurring specifiable environments. Because of these additional facts, this chapter presents for consideration an alternative interpretation of their significance. The present analysis suggests that these facts are important indicators of the direction and timing of the loss of the case markers. It 100 proposes that the environments where evidence of case markers occurs in these papyri are ones in which cases were sometimes still used in spoken early Islamic Arabic and that, therefore, Muslim Middle Arabic papyri reveal at least some environments in spoken Arabic where cases were retained longest. In this way, these papyri may provide a number of clues about details concerning the progression of the loss of Arabic case endings. 3.1. Evidence from Long Vowels before Pronoun Suffixes 3.1.1. Conclusions made by Honkins fl984) Hopkins (1984:20, 24) concludes that even though hamza (= the letter representing glottal stop) hardly exists in the papyri and therefore has probably been dropped from the spoken language which was the basis of the orthography^, "at least partial preservation of hamza (and with it the case endings)" is suggested by some instances of waw (= the letter representing [w, ü]), va' (= the letter representing [y, 1]), and 'alif (= the letter representing [â]) before pronominal suffixes in the papyri. These instances are those in which (1) -aw- ( 'alif + waw) occurs where CA would pronounce [-a'-u- ^Hopkins (1984:19-20) says that when evidence of hamza is in the papyri, it has become w or y or is in late or literary papyri, where it therefore seems to be an intrusion from CA. He attributes the general absence of hamza to inheritance from old Arabic dialects which had lost the glottal stop and then became the basis of CA orthography. This seems to be a reasonable explanation. Rabin (1951:130-31) reports that, according to accounts by the medieval Arab grammarian^ the dialects which had lost hamza included certainly the gi]âzi dialect and probably all the western dialects, as well as some eastern dialects in some instances. 101 ] for the nominative, while other instances of the same environment write only -â-, thus seeming to have neither the glottal stop nor the case vowel there anymore; and (2) -ây- ( 'alif + va* ) occurs where CA would pronounce [-â'-i-] for the genitive, while other instances of the same environment write only -a-, therefore also seeming to have neither the glottal stop nor the case vowel there anymore. Hopkins (1984:24) says: These spellings [of alif + wâw/vâ ' in accordance with CA (AG-M) ] seem to indicate quite clearly at least a partial preservation both of the glottal stop and of the case-system. . . . In several cases instances of the genitive spelled with alif + va* alternating with alif alone for the accusative, apparently bear witness to the functionings of a case-system— this is of some significance, as the other available evidence points unequivocally to the conclusion that the case system in the Arabic of the papyri had broken down, and was already at a stage comparable to that of the modern colloquials. These "exceptions"— as he terms them— to the general absence of a case system in Muslim MA are listed in Table 9. 102 Table 9 Examples of Partial Preservation of Hamza and Case Vowels^ (cited by Hopkins 1984:20-24) I. EVIDENCE OF NOMINATIVE CASE MARKERS: Muslim MA for CA Meaning Page ma-w-h ma'-u-hu 'water-NOM-its.M' 20,24 ma-w-ha^ ml'-u-hl 'water-NOM-its.F' 21,24 ibrl-w-hm ibrl'-u-hum ’the absolving-NOM-of them.M' 24 ]1 Gnl-w-hf ]all 0anl'-u-hu 'Be.great praise-NOM-his' 24 inqadl-w-hn inqa^l'-u-hunna 'expiry-NOM-their.F' 24 II. EVIDENCE OF GENITIVE AND ACCUSATIVE CASE MARKERS, DIFFERENTIATED IN THE SAME DOCUMENT OR ARCHIVE'*: Muslim MA for CA Meaning Page b-^tl-y-hm bi-'=a^l ’ -i-him ’with-stipend-GEN-their.M' 24 ®tl-hm ^atl’-a-hum ’with-stipend-ACC-their.M’ 24 daml-y-km daml’-i-kum ’blood-GEN-your’ 24 daml-km daml’-a-kum ’blood-ACC-your’ 24 bql-y-k baql-i-ka ’life-GEN-your.M' 24 bql-k baql-a-ka ’1ife-ACC-your.M’ 24 bql-h baql-a-hu •life-ACC-his' 24 *Hopkins does not indicate how many instances of these phenomena occur in the papyri; he simply says that they do occur and that these are "some examples" of them. As usual, w represents wlw. and y represents yl’ in this table. Also, in keeping with Arabic orthography, short vowels are not shown in the words from the papyri unless they are specially indicated in the papyri. *%opkins (p. 21) reports that "the more regular treatment" for this word in the papyri is ml-hl (which shows neither evidence of a glottal stop nor of a case vowel). 103 (notes for Table 9 continued) This is a set expression and so would be susceptible to preserving archaisms. Therefore, it may not be evidence of productive use of hamza and case vowels at this time. %opkins (p. 24) notes that some documents use 'alif alone for all these spellings. He reports, for example, that baâ-k •life-your.M' (for CA baoâ'-a/i-ka) occurs for both the accusative (1.1.1) and the genitive (1.1.4) in APRL VI, 19. According to the descriptions Hopkins (pp. 21-22, 25-30) gives for changes in the papyri in words which contained medial or word-final hamza in CA, the words listed in Table 9 which have -w- or -y- before the pronoun suffix do, indeed, show evidence of some sound having come after -â- and before the suffix. Hopkins finds the following patterns— presented in my notation— for changes and deletions of medial and word- final hamza in the papyri: (A) ' > C ; and V > [+long] 0 / ^Cilong] — (B) ' > 0 / ^[+long] — # ; and V > [-long] (C) ' > 0 / C _ X (D) ' > y / (E) • > w / (F) ' > 0 / (= > These phonological changes from CA, listed in (A-F), which occur throughout the papyri, lead to the following conclusions concerning the words in Table 9. (1) If a glottal stop and nothing else had occurred after the -a- and before the pronoun suffix in any word 104 containing -w- or -y- in Table 9, then by the phonological process listed in (A)— in which the glottal stop occurs between a long vowel and a consonant— the glottal stop would have disappeared. Thus, nothing would have appeared between the -â- and the suffix in the MA word. This is what occurred for representations such as mâ-hâ (NOM) , mentioned in Table 9, note b, which Hopkins reported (p. 21) to be the most usual spelling of the word. Since this is not how the words listed in Table 9 were written in the papyri, they must have had an additional sound occurring between the -â- and the suffix, to account for the -w- or -y- which is written there. (2) The phonological processes listed in (D) and (E) show that a glottal stop became a va' in the papyri when it occurred between [i] and some other vowel, and it became a waw in the papyri when it occurred between [u] and some other vowel. While Hopkins' presentation (pp. 26-28) of these phonological processes only documents them as occurring morpheme-internally and so does not mention the examples listed in Table 9, the examples in this table are accounted for by these processes. The -w- in the words in Table 9, section I, would have been generated by -a'-u- becoming -âw-u- by the process listed in (E), and the -y- in the words in section II would have been generated by -â'-i- becoming -ay-i- in by the process listed in (D). Since short vowels are not written in the Arabic script, there is no way to tell for sure from the written representations whether the case vowels -u- 105 (NOM) and -i- (GEN) were retained after the glottal stop changed to [w] or [y], respectively. However, -u- and -i- must have at least been there originally in order to create the environment for the consonant change to occur. And since these and similar words occur in other places in the papyri without the -w- and -y-, this shows that the -w- and -y- were not fossilized in these words. This is evidence that the representations with -w- and -y- were generated during the same time period as those without these consonants and, thus, that the case vowels -u- and -i- must have been in use sometimes during the time period the Muslim papyri were written. (3) The words listed in Section II of Table 9 which have only -a- before the pronominal suffix could have been generated by either of two phonological processes, from different base forms; (1) either the accusative case vowel - a- was present and the process listed in (F) occurred so that -a*-a- became -â-, or (2) the accusative case vowel was not present and the process listed in (A) occurred so that -â'- became -â-. Since both of these possibilities generate the reported results for these words, it is not possible to conclude from these facts alone exactly what probably occurred with these forms. However, when the corresponding words in Table 9 which contain -y- are considered, and if the case vowels explain the orthography, then the most economical explanation for -â- is the first alternative above. 106 In addition to the above evidence that case vowels were sometimes still used by writers of Muslim MA, Hopkins' report (p. 24) that he has not found any hyper-correct use of such spellings with -w- or -y- in Muslim MA is more evidence that spellings with -w- and -y- were a living phenomenon. Hyper- correct use would arise from the writer trying to use the prestigious CA case markers -w- and -y- but not knowing how to use them correctly if they did not occur in "lower," colloquial Arabic, and so using them in places where even CA did not use them. Blau (1970:12-13) describes this phenomenon as follows: Whenever a language enjoying religious, social and other prestige comes into contact with one lacking such status, speakers of the 'inferior* speech try to assimilate forms of the 'superior'. . . . [I]n his endeavour to apply forms of the higher language, the speaker (or writer) may overshoot the mark and employ superior-language forms in cases where inferior-language ones are employed even by the superior speech, resulting in an over-correct style. In a certain context, the forms dominant in the vernacular happen to be identical with the features called for by the grammar of the superior language. So strong, however, is the speaker's (or writer's) desire to refrain from inferior-language forms that he avoids those which are correct according to the rules of the superior language, simply because they are also dominant in his vernacular, and replaces them by forms which, though correct in the superior language in certain contexts, are wrong even according to its pattern in that particular position. A form dominant in the vernacular is regarded as inferior, and if the feature demanded by the superior language chances to be identical with it, the speaker (or writer) is apt to substitute for it a form which he regards as correct, merely by reason of its occurrences (in another context) in the higher language but not in the vernacular. These 'inverse' forms are generally called 'hyper-correct' (or 'hyper- urbane ') features. 107 Therefore, since, according to Blau (1970), a person is "apt" to make hyper-corrections when a prestigious-language feature generally differs from a "lower"-language feature except in certain contexts, the absence of hyper-correct uses of case endings in Muslim MA suggests (but does not prove) that the prestigious case endings were still enough in use in the "lower" (= colloquial) form of the language that they were not adopted in hyper-correct ways from the more prestigious form of the language (= the classical Arabic of the pre-Islamic poetry and Qur'an). All this evidence suggests that one environment in which case vowels continued to be used sometimes in Muslim MA is before pronoun suffixes. Since this is an environment in which these grammatical markers would be protected— by the suffix— from elision at the end of the word, it is not surprising that vowels would be retained in such an environment longer than at the end of the word.^ This did not happen all the time, as shown by Hopkins' examples (pp. 22-23) of MA forms which ended in CA in both -â and -S' and in the papyri have suffixed pronouns but no evidence of case markers. However, this evidence that case vowels were sometimes retained in one environment in MA provides a rationale for further examination of the details of Muslim MA case usage. ^This type of retention does not always happen in Semitic languages; Akkadian lost the singular nominative and accusative vowels completely before suffixes but kept them elsewhere. 108 This would show where and how case vowels were used at this time, even if they were not still in use everywhere. Closer scrutiny of the evidence from the Muslim Middle Arabic texts cited by Hopkins (1984) and Blau (1966-67, 1981) suggests that there were additional contexts in which case vowels were used at this time. These are discussed below. 3.1.2. Additional Conclusions 3.1.2.1. Occasional Pointing of Ya* as KursI with Two Dots Hopkins (1984:19,§19n.l) says that loss of the glottal stop in Muslim MA, in addition to being indicated by either complete absence in the text or representation by waw or yâ' as described above in Section 3.1.1, is also "further clearly indicated by the occasional [apparently random] pointing of va* as kursl [= orthographic seat for hamza. shaped like yâ* but without two dots beneath it which characterize va*] with two dots. ..." For Christian Middle Arabic, Blau (1966- 67:84) offers the following reasoning regarding this phenomenon. As a rule, it is rather difficult to decide on the strength of the orthography alone whether a particular word was pronounced with or without hamza. . . . Nevertheless, the mere fact that hamza is, as a rule, not marked, seems to indicate that the glottal stop has disappeared. . . . The regular use of the dots of va*. even when according to classical spelling it should serve as kursl of hamza. mav also be interpreted as an additional sign of this phenomenon. Blau (1966-67:84n.4) also notes that "the kursl-va* of hamza sometimes exhibits its two dots in mss. of Muslim provenance," and he cites Fleischer (1885-88:1 45n.2) who says: 109 Die von der strengen Observanz hier verlangte Unterdrûckung der Punkte des va'. . . soil in ihrer Verbindung mit dem Hamzah nur noch starker daran erinnern, dass das dal kein wirkliches yâ' ist. Dem waw konnte man nicht füglich etwas abbrechen; sonst würde es in demselben Falle einer entsprechenden Verkürzung wohl nicht entgangen sein. The reason for interpreting the pointing of kursl as showing the disappearance of hamza must be due to orthographic rules. In Arabic script the kursl beneath hamza does not have dots, while dots characterize va' when they are written (they are not always indicated). Therefore the fact that effort was made to write dots in the MA instances mentioned indicates that va'. rather than kursl. was intended, and what had been a glottal stop in CA had been replaced by va' in such words. Hopkins (1984:19§19n.1) cites one example of this, and two of Blau's (1981:125) examples of words which show loss of glottal stop in Muslim MA also appear to fit this situation. These words are listed in Table 10. Table 10 Muslim MA Words with Kursl-Yâ' Written with Dots (cited by Hopkins [1984:19§19n.l] and Blau [1981:125]) Muslim MA for CA Meaning Source mn 'rqay-na min 'arigâ'-i-nâ 'of slaves-GEN-our' H mn d®ay-h... min du^a'-i-hi... 'from prayer-GEN-his... fl d'^ây-h fl du®a'-i-hi in prayer-GEN-his' B With these data, it is possible to go beyond both Hopkins' and Blau's reasoning regarding these words and ask the question "Why?”; Why was hamza replaced by va' in these words rather than simply dropped, if the sound it represented was no longer pronounced? For the three words in question in Table 10, if the glottal stop was not pronounced, and the case ending was also not pronounced, as Hopkins and Blau maintain, the MA pronunciations would have had no consonant before the pronoun suffix: [min 'ariqâ-nâ], [min du®l-h(i)], and [fl du*^a-h(i) ]. Therefore, why was any letter written in MA where hamza was written in CA? These words are actually just like those discussed in Section 3.1.1 and listed in Table 9 Part II, except that the words in Table 10 spelled with -y- do not have counterparts spelled with only -â- to contrast with. That is, by phonological rule (A) listed in Section 3.1.1, if both the glottal stop and the case vowel had been dropped in these words so that they were pronounced with only -â- before the consonant of the pronoun suffix, then nothing would have appeared in the papyri between the -â- and the suffix. The fact that a va* appears between the -â- and the suffix, however, shows that some other sound was also pronounced there. If the glottal stop were still pronounced but the case vowel were not, then there would have been no need to point the va*. since kursl for hamza is not pointed. However, if the case vowel were still pronounced but the glottal stop were not, then something would be needed to represent the i-like sound ([i/l/y]) that was still made before the pronoun suffix. Ill Yâ* is the logical choice since it already represented both [1] and [y] in CA, while [i] was not as a rule indicated by the script. Furthermore, since va* is written in these words where hamza would be in CA, the phonological rules adduced by Hopkins (1984:21-22, 25-30) from the papyri— listed in Section 3.1.1— show that [i] must have been pronounced in this position in these words because va' is written regularly in the papyri where J_i occurred after a dissimilar vowel in CA, as shown by phonological rule (D). Therefore, the words listed in Table 10 in this section appear to show genitive case vowels still in use because they exhibit va' with two dots in the position where the corresponding case vowel [i] would occur before the pronoun suffix, even though Hopkins and Blau concluded only that they show that glottal stop had disappeared from the pronunciation. These words are like the words listed in Table 9 in Section 3.1.1 which Hopkins concluded probably show case vowels still in use because they exhibit waw. va'. or 'alif in the position for the corresponding short case vowel ([u], [i], or [a]) before a pronoun suffix. The words in Table 10, then, are additional indications that case vowels were sometimes preserved before pronoun suffixes in Muslim MA. They suggest that this occurred even in instances in which the word with the apparent case vowel occurs in only one type of environment (in Table 10, in genitive position) in a document, even if it cannot be 112 contrasted with another occurrence in a different case (as the examples in Table 9 are). This evidence suggests that case vowels were used sometimes in Muslim MA before pronoun suffixes in more instances than have been previously discussed as such. 3.1.2.2. Long Vowels Replacing Root-Final Hamza in Nouns Hopkins (1984:21-22) concludes that other nouns whose roots end in hamza in CA but which have a va* or waw written in that position in Muslim MA have been either (1) "rederived" from root patterns ending in va* (and possibly waw)— that is, the root has been reanalyzed as having a third radical ya* or waw (= Illy or IIIw) rather than a third radical hamza (= IIIJ.), as verbs whose roots in CA ended in hamza have in Muslim MA merged with/adapted to roots ending in va*— or (2) replaced the final hamza with waw by analogy to other nouns ending in waw (p.21n.5). Hopkins (1984:21,80) cites examples of the verb adaptations— e.g., CA gara' (root q-r-') 'to read' became Muslim MA gara*. ending in 'alif magsüra like verbs whose roots end in va' do in CA and in MA, such as banà (root b-n-y) 'to build'— but does not discuss why nouns were subject to the same kind of adaptation as verbs. However, he cites Blau (1966-67:87-88 REM) "for a discussion of words of this ^Following Rabin (1951:llSff.), I use the symbol a to stand for alif magsüra. which represents [a], in order to distinguish it from both final va' which has the same shape but generally also has two dots underneath and represents [1] or [y], and final alif which is written as a vertical stroke and represents [a] or [a]. 113 kind", and he also cites an example from Blau's (1981:125) appendix on Muslim Middle Arabic. Thus he apparently follows Blau's reasoning (outlined below). Further examination of the evidence shows, in addition, that other explanations for these MA spellings receive some independent support. First, the evidence shows that all but one of the noun forms cited by Hopkins and Blau existed in CA, suggesting that the MA nouns under discussion might have been continuations of phenomena that began in CA. If this is so, then the MA nouns would have been either (1) continuations of old forms which varied from the usual standard for these words but were similar enough in meaning to be confused with the standard form, or (2) continuations of dialectal phenomena which created deviations from the standard forms in earlier times. For example, reports of ancient Arabic dialectal pronunciations of nouns ending in hamza reveal that in some dialects new vowels were often added after the medial root consonant due to influence of the following case vowel or the previous stressed vowel. Rabin (1951:134) reports that these dialects either (1) deleted the hamza but retained the case vowel (Hi]âzi, as discussed in Chapter II), (2) metathesized the hamza and the case vowel (Tamlmi), or (3) inserted before the hamza the same vowel as the stressed vowel in the noun (other dialects). With these processes occurring only for nouns that ended in hamza. it would be likely that speakers reinterpreted the resulting forms as base forms (so that these 114 base forms would be like other base forms in the language), then dropped the hamza and lengthened the preceding vowel. In this way, speakers would have derived the new nouns, either in CA or in MA. Finally, following Hopkins' (1984:220-24) interpretation that the presence of ya'. waw. or 'alif where case vowels would be expected before pronoun suffixes indicates preservation of the case vowels in these words (as discussed in Section 3.1.1), the presence of these letters at the ends of the MA nouns under discussion here could also be orthographic representations of case vowels in use in these words— genitive -i, nominative -u, and accusative -a, respectively. These additional interpretations of the evidence presented by these MA nouns are considered below along with Hopkins' and Blau's explanations for the origins of these nouns. The nouns are listed in Table 11 and are discussed following the table. 115 Table 11 "Rederived" MA Nouns. Originally from CA Roots III* (cited by Hopkins 1984:21; Blau 1981:125;= Muslim MA; Blau 1966-67:87-88 = Christian MA) MA® for CA^ Meaning Source bdw '1-xlq bad' al-xalq 'beginning DEF-creation' H = 'the beginning of creation' mula 'l-'rdf mil' al-'ar# 'fullness DEF-earth' H,B'81 = 'the fullness of the earth' qrây-a^ qira'-a** 'reading' B'66-7 b'^d hdâ-h ba*^d had'-i-hi 'after calmness-GEN- B'66-7 it.M' = 'after it was calm' hdy had' 'rest' B'66-7 wty wat' 'tread' B'66-7 bdy bad' 'beginning' B'66-7 ]zw(a)® ]uz' 'pairt ' B'66-7 brw(a)® bur' 'health' B'66-7 bdw(a)® bad' 'beginning' B'66-7 mlw mil' 'full measure' B'66-7 ®In these words, w represents waw and y represents va'. *^either Hopkins nor Blau indicates case vowels for the CA words. ®Here, following Rabin (1951:115ff.), a represents 'alif magsüra. written like yâ' but with no dots underneath— as explained in Footnote 2 above. ‘‘Here, -a = ta' marbflta. ®Here, â represents 'alif al-wioava (= 'the guarding 'alif'), usually written after w when it comes at the end of a word, in order to prevent separation of the -w from the end of the word and subsequent confusion with w written at the beginning of a word, meaning 'and' (cf. Wright 1974[1896]i:ll REM.a). 116 3.1.2.2.1. MA Nouns with III-'alif or -va' Blau (1966-67:87) reasons that Christian MA nouns whose third root letter is 'alif or va' and which cannot be derived directly from their CA verbs which ended in hamza must have been rederived from a root ending in va ' < CA hamza. after the verbs ending in hamza in CA had merged in MA with those ending in va'. He cites hdâ-h 'it was calm' as rederived from the MA verb hadâ < CA hada'a since "it is impossible to derive it directly from the noun had'." He also lists the following as having to have undergone the same type of rederivation: MA hdv (CA had') 'rest', MA wtv (CA wa£i) 'tread', and MA bdv (CA bad') 'beginning'. This explanation of Blau's for nouns derived from MA verbs Ill-va' < CA roots Ill-hamza is plausible since the adaptation of verbs Ill-hamza to verbs Ill-va' is well attested and is also a very old phenomenon in Arabic,^ and since most Arabic verbs have nouns with the same root consonants as the corresponding verbs. That is, after the ^According to Blau (1966-67:177n. 167), this is "one of the most conspicuous features of the ancient Hi]âzî dialect". Rabin (1951:142) reports that it is common in a number of dialects: Forms after the pattern of tertiae va' from hamzated roots are not uncommon in the work of Eastern poets (Schwarz, Umar iv, 107; Wright ii, 375-6). Vollers (Volkssprache, p. 86) gives a long list of roots in which the two classes are constantly confused. In the colloquials the two classes coincide even in regions where hamza is fairly well preserved. Actually, the Hijazis seem to have kept them apart as well as anyone else. The spelling of the Koran, in its own way, keeps them distinct. 117 verb change of roots Ill-hamza becoming Ill-va*. Arabic speakers could have formed new nouns based on the new verb roots, by paradigmatic extension from the rest of the verb- noun system which has forms for both based on a common root. Or, as Rabin (1951:138) adduces for the formation of Christian Arabic airâvât from CA aira * at 'readings, recitations', the new noun could also have been based on the 3M.SG.IMPERF form, whose ending was pronounced [1] (spelled - va'). Thus, CA qara'a 'to read, recite', 3M.S.IMPERF vagra'u. would have become MA gara [gara], 3M.S.IMPERF vaarv [yaqrl]. Then the MA noun would have been formed by paradigmatic extension to the 3M.S.IMPERF.— CA [yaqra'u] : MA [yaqrl] : : CA [qirâ'ât] : MA X = [qirâylt]. This type of extension could not have been very common, though, since the phonetics are not straightforward; it requires deriving a y between two instances of the back vowel a, with only a final I. as the impetus for the change. Furthermore, this rederivation of nouns based on roots Ill-va ' < roots Ill-hamza did not begin only in MA. For example, Rabin (1951:144) says that the ancient Hi]âzi dialect formed the noun bidava (Tâj, i, 42) from the dialectal verb badiva < CA badi'a ' to approach'. Therefore it is interesting that each of the MA noun forms which Hopkins (1984:21-22) and Blau (1966-67:87; 1981:125) cite as ending in 'alif or va' < CA hamza. and which Blau says therefore have to have been derived from some form other than the CA form ending in hamza. 118 listed in Lane (1863-93) as having been reported by the medieval Arab philologists to occur in CA. Since Lane (1863- 93:xi) states that "[m]ost of the contents of the best Arabic lexicons [which Lane's sources were based on] was [sic] committed to writing, or to the memories of students, in the latter half of the second century of the Flight, or in the former half of the next century", the aforementioned noun forms cited by Hopkins, Blau, and Lane (1863-93) had already been formed in CA by the time (most of) the Middle Arabic texts were written. Therefore, this phenomenon in Middle Arabic should not be seen as a new development begun in MA. Rather, it should be recognized as the continuation of either the same words or the same type of process that had already begun in the standard register of Arabic, or perhaps in earlier dialects which contributed to the formation of CA.* The existence of this type of pattern allowed writers to create similar forms in these later dialects. Finally, another interpretation of the long vowels at the ends of the MA nouns under discussion is that these were an ^Because of the intimate relationship between CA and spoken varieties of Arabic in all historic periods, it is probably not possible to determine whether the nouns under discussion were borrowed from CA into MA or were innovated separately in MA. Therefore it is not possible to determine whether these nouns are a continuation of the words or process that had already been formed in CA or whether they are the result of the separate innovation of the same process at different times in both registers. We can only determine that they existed in both registers in early Islamic times, with the instances recorded for CA slightly preceding those recorded for MA. 119 orthographic means of representing case vowels in MA when they were used where case vowels would have been in CA. Since, as noted by Hopkins (1978:20-24) and discussed above in Section 3.1.1, there is evidence that MA writers were using long vowels to represent case vowels before pronoun suffixes, it follows that they would have done the same thing elsewhere in the manuscripts. In any case, it is clear that we should take a broader perspective of the MA nouns ending in va*. 'alif. or waw < CA hamza than has been indicated previously. 3.1.2.2.2. Muslim and Christian MA Nouns with Ill-waw Similarly, an understanding of the MA nouns ending in waw while the CA form ended in hamza should, at least, also be broader, and, probably, be different than either Hopkins (1984:21-22) or Blau (1966-67:87-88 REM) indicates. The explanations which Hopkins and Blau give for these MA nouns do not consider several possibilities of derivation, including the possibility that these forms originated due to influence of the nominative case vowel -u. Contrary to Blau (1966- 67:88n.20), who explicitly excludes this explanation, the evidence presented here suggests that influence of the nominative -u may actually have been the impetus for the waw in MA nouns which ended in hamza in CA. Similarly, influence of the genitive -i, and possibly the accusative -a, could have been the impetus for some ya's and 'alifs. respectively, in MA nouns which ended in hamza in CA. 120 First, Blau's (1966-67:87-88 REM) explanation of Christian MA nouns ending in waw whose roots ended in hamza in CA is less than convincing. He says: Nouns from roots tertiae hamzatae terminating in waw. have to be interpreted otherwise [than those terminating in va' 1. One must not derive them from verba tertiae waw that originated from tertiae hamzatae. because tertiae waw have been supplanted by tertiae va as well, v. §91. In all probability they first arose in nouns of the pattern out' by vowel harmony > cnitu ' > outa. nouns of the pattern gat' and git' being then formed in analogy to them.^° ’’For such forms in Qur'lnic readings, v. Vollers 99B. ^°By proportional analogy: iaza 'to divide' : iuzw/iuzfl [ Blau's first conclusion is reasonable— that MA nouns ending in waw cannot have been derived in MA from nouns which ended in hamza in CA and then became waw in MA— since, as Blau (1966- 67:190[§91]n.214) documents, verbs Ill-waw became Ill-va' in Christian MA. Furthermore, he notes that this was a well- established change which began in some ancient Arabic dialects and is attested in CA, Muslim MA, and Judaeo-MA. Hopkins (1984:21n.5) states, on the other hand, that "for the papyri. . . , to judge from the available material, it seems that the category of Illy < Illw does not (yet?) exist (§82a)", and therefore it may be possible that MA nouns ending 121 in Ill-wâw < CA Ill-hamza could have arisen "as a result of adaptation to a root IIIw". He reasons further, however, that his having found no examples of this phenomenon in the papyri is simply due to chance since the language of the papyri exhibits a "general affinity . . . to ASP and other varieties of Middle Arabic. . . ."^ Therefore he concludes that this type of MA noun probably did not arise as a result of adaptation to a root Ill-waw. and he prefers the analogy explanation given by Blau (1966-67:87-88 REM), discussed below. However, Blau's conclusion about the origin of these MA nouns in Ill-waw < CA hamza is problematic. Blau's explanation is that Christian MA nouns ending in waw first arose by vowel harmony in the pattern out'. becoming qutu' and then cmtfl. and then this pattern spread by analogy to nouns in the patterns oat' and ait'. However, this explanation does not provide a motivation for the first change. Blau (1966- 67:88n.l9) only notes that such forms occurred in Qur'anic readings. But why were these nouns pronounced this way in these readings? That is, was the second -u- an epenthetic ^Regarding verbs in Ill-waw. Hopkins states further in §82a (p. 84), [i]t is most surprising that no examples of the development of verba tertiae waw > tertiae va' have yet been found in the papyri. As this is a very well attested phenomenon within Arabic, documented from CA and old dialects down to modern vernaculars, it seems that this absence is due simply to accident (or oversight). For this reason, not too much importance should be attached to it. 122 vowel, or did it already exist and get moved from another position to the second syllable in the word? Did this second- syllable -u- occur only in words that had -u- in the first syllable, and why or why not? These questions must be answered in order to determine whether Blau's explanation is adequate. Rabin (1951:134) provides evidence from the ancient Arabic dialects which bears on this issue. He reports that the Arabic dialects treated nouns ending in - C in various ways. He says that, for example, rid'u 'assistance' became (according to 'Astarâbâdl, quoted by Howell, iv, 801) ridu in the gi]âzi dialect and rid in pause, while (according to Sibawaihi, ii, 312; Birkeland 1940:61) the Tamlmi dialect preserved the hamza in pause by either transposing the case vowel before it (ar-ridu' NOM DBF, ar-ridi' GEN DBF, ar-rida' ACC DBF) or, in some dialects, inserting the same vowel as the stressed vowel before the hamza far-ridi' for all cases). Furthermore, Cadora (forthcoming:21) quotes Sallüm (1986:128- 29) as reporting that some bedouin dialects also metathesized the case vowel with the hamza. producing a different form for each case. He quotes the forms given above for rid'u and also gives the forms for bu^'u 'slowness' fal-bu^u' NOM DBF, al- buti' GEN DBF, and a1-buta' ACC DBF). He reports that "the resulting forms undergo vowel assimilation and produce one form /butu'/ and /ridi'/ . . . , obliterating case differences in this position." 123 This evidence answers the questions above, showing that even though some dialects would have pronounced nouns which ended in CA - C with -u- in the second syllable only when -u- occurred in the first syllable, the gigazis in context and the Tamlmis in pause pronounced any such nouns in the nominative case with -u- in the second syllable, regardless what vowel was in the first syllable. Therefore, there would have been numerous dialectal occurrences of nouns in the nominative ending in -u derived from CA -C , with any of the three vowels in the first syllable, which MA writers could easily have represented with waw. as they did sometimes before pronoun suffixes. This would have derived the MA nouns Blau and Hopkins list which end in waw < CA hamza. This shows that while analogy might have occurred to spread this new form of noun, it is not necessary to propose that it was the origin of these words. On the other hand, though, it is necessary to refer to case vowels to account for the original dialectal pronunciations of at least some such nouns. Furthermore, since the same phonetic process also created nouns ending in - i(') for the genitive case and -a(') for the accusative case, the MA nouns with Ill-va* and - 'alif could also have arisen this way. Finally, three of the four MA noun forms which Blau (1966-67:87-88)— for Christian MA— and Hopkins (1984:21-22) — for Muslim MA— cite as ending in waw < CA hamza are listed by Lane (1863-93) as having occurred in CA, as described below. 124 Therefore, as with the MA nouns which ended in va* and 'alif. discussed in Section 3.2.1.2.2, these MA nouns which ended in waw could have been continuations of the CA noun forms, due to subsequent confusion of forms or shift in meaning. 3.1.2.2.3. Reanalvsis of MA Nouns with Ill-va*. -waw. or 'alif from Nouns with CA Ill-hamza The following noun forms which are the same as the MA forms Hopkins (1984:21-22) and Blau (1966-67:87-88; 1981:125) discuss as ending in Ill-va'. - 'alif or -waw. < CA hamza (listed in Table 11) are presented in Lane (1863-93). Nouns with the first two types of endings are discussed first, followed by nouns of the third type of ending. Explanations are given for each form to show how it could have either (1) been confused with the standard CA form for the word in III- hamza. (2) shifted in meaning to replace the CA form for the word in Ill-hamza. or (3) been an orthographic means of indicating the case vowel at the end of the word. The fourth possibility, that these noun forms could have developed a new form in Ill-va'. -waw. or - 'alif due to phonetic processes, has already been discussed in Section 3.1.2.2.2. (A) Muslim MA mula 'fullness' (CA mill). Lane (1863- 93:2729-30) lists three CA nouns which have the same orthographic shape as this MA noun fm-1-yâ' ) : mall 'a— one of the infinitive nouns of the root m-1-' = 'to fill, satisfy, glut', mall '-un and maliw-un 'a rich man; trusty or honest'. Therefore, an explanation for the MA form mula is that is 125 represents one of these nouns, which are from the same root but spelled differently than the CA form mil' (= m-l-hamza). While the last two are distant from the first in meaning, it is most likely that people confused the first one (the infinitive noun mall 'a) with mil' (= ' [a] thing sufficient in quantity, or dimensions, for the filling of a vessel, or the quantity that a vessel holds when it is filled' according to Lane) because these two words were very close in meaning. Therefore, these two nouns that had been distinct in CA could have become synonyms in MA, so that m-1-vâ ' in the MA text represents the CA word mall'a. The vowel -u- written in the first syllable in the text is a mystery, however. Hopkins (1984:6n.l4) says that it may be an assimilation to the preceding m. David-Weill (1939-48 11:14), the editor of the MA text, says that it "seems to be an error" because all the variant texts give mila* or mil'. Another explanation is that the MA form does represent mil' . and the yâ' represents the genitive case vowel -i. This is appropriate since the noun occurs here (David-Weill 1939-48 1:5 = Ibn Wahb 4,13) in a genitive context: min mil'-i -1- 'ar^ 'from the fullness of the earth', lit. 'from fullness-GEN DEF-earth'. This may also be the text editor's explanation since he says (David-Weill 1939-48 I:5n.l.l3) that this word should be read mila'. while giving (11:14) mil'i as the 126 correct CA rendering.® He also explains (I:iv) that yâ* is written for final weak vowels in imperfect ([-i]) and jussive ([-a]) verbs throughout the text, where CA would not indicate these sounds with long vowel symbols. This shows that the writer used va' to represent sounds that are not written with long vowels in CA orthography. Therefore, the explanation that the writer used va' here to represent the case vowel in this word (in order to emphasize what the quality of the vowel was) is consistent with his use of the long vowel to emphasize the quality of the vowel with the final weak vowels for verbs. (B) Christian MA hdâ 'calmness' (in hdâ-h 'it was calm' ; CA had'). Lane (1863-93:2883) reports that had'-un (NOM) was the main noun of the root h-d-' fhada'a 'to be quiet, still, calm, unruffled; motionless; silent'). However, a verb with the same root consonants but a different meaning, pronunciation, and spelling— hadi'a. 'to have a curving back, . . . depressed and even shoulders, inclining towards the breast; not erect, or elevated, humpbacked', with an [i] for the middle vowel, and a va' before the hamza— had the noun hada'-un. which could also mean 'smallness of a camel's hump, occasioned by his being much laden.' Therefore, an explanation for the MA form hada is that the form hada' could have been confused for had' by the writer, since they have the ®0n the other hand, mila' could represent mila'. which other texts give. If that were David-Weill's opinion, though, it would seem that he would have given mila'i as the correct CA rendering. 127 same consonants and since they are therefore both written h-d- hamza. the only difference being that the hamza of hada' is written atop an 'alif while the hamza of had' is written alone. If the hamza and the tanwln (marks indicating indefiniteness, here = -un, the nominative marking) of hada'- un were either not pronounced due to elision, or not written in the text, as is usual for MA, then the MA hdâ could represent the form hada ' -un from CA, which would be pronounced [hada] in MA and would likely be written h-d-'alif as in the cited text. Since this noun form occurs in a genitive context (bafd hdâ-h 'after it was calm', lit. 'after calmness-its'), the 'alif could not be signifying the genitive case marker, -i. (C) Christian MA hdy (CA had' ) 'rest'. As mentioned in (B), Lane (1863-93:2883) reports that had'-un (NOM) was the main noun of the root h-d-' fhada'a 'to be quiet, still, calm, unruffled; motionless; silent'). However, when the noun had a slightly different meaning— 'the first third part of the night ; . . . when it begins to be still'— it had several alternative forms, one of them hadi'-in (when in genitive position in a phrase Lane quotes), written with yâ' preceding the hamza. If the hamza and the tanwln (marks indicating indefiniteness, here = -in, the genitive marking) were either not pronounced due to elision, or not written in the text, as is usual for MA, then the MA hdv could represent the form 128 I have not been able to check the context this noun form occurs in, and so it cannot now be determined whether the yâ' could represent the genitive marker -i. (D) Christian MA wtv (CA watM 'tread'. Lane (1863- 93:2949) reports that wat'-un was the main noun of the root w- t-' but that an adjective of the same root was wati'-un '[p]lain, level, smooth, soft, or easy to be travelled, or to walk or ride or lie upon.' This word is written the same way as hadi'-in. with va' preceding hamza. so that, in the same way as for hadi-'in. if the hamza and the tanwl n (marks indicating indefiniteness, here = -un, the nominative marking) were either not pronounced due to elision, or not written in the text, as is usual for MA, then the MA wtv could represent the form wati' from CA (confused with the noun wat'), which would be pronounced [wa^I] in MA. I have not been able to check either of the two contexts this noun form occurs in, and so it cannot now be determined whether the va' could represent the genitive marker -i in either of them. (E) Christian MA bdy {CA bad') 'beginning'. Lane (1863- 93:164,171) reports that badi * -un (which he says is the original form) / badiw-un is another noun of the same root as bad'-un (b-d-'), meaning 'first; . . . the first thing (NOM)', and that the frequently-used phrase bâdi'a badi'in 'Do thou that first; . . . or the first thing' was often pronounced bldl badi or badi badi wi n . Since [1 ] is written with va'. 129 this bâdl. reported for CA, could be the form that was written in the MA texts, revealing a substitution of one frequently- used noun of the root b-d-' for another noun of the same root. Blau (1966-67:87) cites 10 instances of this form in Christian MA texts, and I have been able to check four of them. Of these four, three are in genitive contexts: Ma'lOf 1903:1021,-5 = fl ' 1-bdv (the editor writes bd' ) 'in the beginning', lit. 'in DEF-beginning'; and Gibson 1899:Arabic 6,8 (Act 11,15) and Marr 1906:130,8 = min '1-bdv 'from the beginning' lit. 'from DEF-beginning'. The fourth instance is in an accusative context: Arendzen 1897:Arabic 23,12 = bdv (the editor writes the CA bdv'-an = [badi'-an]) 'beginning (- ACC)'. Therefore, the yâ' could represent the vowel quality [i] in these instances, signifying genitive -i in the first three and the medial [1 ] (but not the accusative case marker) in the fourth, with the hamza and the indefinite markers for - an not written. (F) Muslim and Christian MA bdwfâ] (CA bad' ) 'beginning'. Lane (1863-93:171) cites badw-un (NOM) as a noun of the root b-d-w (the verb is cited, p. 170, as badâ = 'to appear; become apparent, open, manifest, plain, or evident'), saying that this noun signifies 'The first of a thing, originally bad'-un. with hemzeh' (from the root b-d-', whose verb bada'a is listed on p. 163 as meaning 'to begin; make to have precedence, be first; give precedence to'). Therefore it seems that the change from hamza to wâw in this noun had 130 have precedence, be first; give precedence to') . Therefore it seems that the change from hamza to wâw in this noun had already happened in CA and that the resulting badw was so common that this noun was no longer identified as belonging to the original root b-d-' but was now identified as belonging to the root b-d-w. Hopkins (1984:21) cites one instance of this noun form: Abbott 1946:172,2. Its intended case is impossible to ascertain because everything before it on the line (except an 'alif immediately before it) is missing. Blau (1966-67:88) cites five instances of this noun form, four of which I have been able to check. Of these four, two are in nominative contexts: Levin 1938:Arabic 1,title = bdw 'nivl mGaws 'the beginning of the gospel of Matthew', lit. 'beginning gospel Matthew'; and Levin 1938:Arabic 57,title = bdw 'nivl mras 'the beginning of the gospel of Mark', lit. 'beginning gospel Mark'. The other two instances are in accusative contexts: Gibson 1899:Arabic 75,14 = bdw xla 'llh '1-sml w-l-'rd 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.", lit. 'beginning created God DEF-heavens and-DEF-earth'; and Gibson 1899-.Arabic 12,12-13 (ACT 14,12) mn 'nl 'n-h kân sâhb bdw '1- klâm 'because he was the chief speaker', lit. 'because (2 words) that-he was master beginning DEF-speech'. In the two nominative instances, the wâw could represent the nominative case marker -u. In the two accusative instances, the wâw is followed by an 'alif which probably served as the seat for the 131 (G) Christian MA izwfâ) (CA juzJ.) 'part'. Lane (1863- 93:418) states that both luz'-un and naz'-un 'a part or portion or division of a thing' are nouns of the root ]-z-' (the verb, cited on p. 417, is laza'a 'to divide; take a portion'), and that a Had!th and a Qur'Inic passage are read with wâw. instead of hamza. as the third consonant of this noun. He reports that in one Hadlth passage, laz' meaning "'green, or fresh, pasture or herbage' with the people of El- Medeeneh" was commonly read as izw (no vowels are indicated). And in a reading of the Qur'an (Sura = 'chapter' XLIII, 'Âya = 'verse' 14), nuz'-an (ACC) 'share, portion' was read luzu'- an (written with wâw under the hamza) by some readers in the phrase wa-ia'^al-ü la-hu min ^ibâdi-hi luz'-an/iuzu'-an. meaning, according to ®A11 (1989:1266) "'Yet they attribute to some of His servants a share with Him'"’ (lit. 'and-attribute- 3M.PL to-him from servants-his share-INDEF'). Since wâw was present as the third consonant of this word in these two readings, this form of the word could have become well known from the readings and then been reanalyzed as the root form of the word. Hopkins (1984:22n.6) says he found no examples of this very common Christian MA word in Muslim MA papyri until the ^ ’Alternatively, Lane (1863-93:418) reports that nuz'- an/iuzu'-an means Females in this reading, so that the translation is 'they asserted the angels to be the daughters of God', adding, however, "but others dispute this." In my opinion, the translation given above fits the context better than this one does. 132 13th-14th centuries A.D. Therefore, the "standard" form of this noun (jzj_) must have continued to be used well past the beginning of Islam. Blau (1966-67:88) cites 12 examples of jzw. I have been able to check five (Ma®10f 1903:1014,3; 1015,2; Arendzen 1897:Arabic 2,16; Gibson 1894:Arabic 63,11 = ICorl2,27; Arabic 76,6 = IICorI,14), and they are all in genitive contexts (•for/to/other.than/from the/this part'). Therefore, the wâw in these instances cannot represent the nominative case marker -u. (H) Christian MA brwfâ) ( CA bur ' ) 'health'. Lane (1863- 93:178) reports that bur'-un. bar'-un. buru'-un. and burO'-un were nouns of the root b-r-' (the verb forms being bara'a for the dialects of gi]âz and al-'Aliya, bari'a for the dialect of Tamlm, and baru'a for unspecified dialects), all meaning 'to become clear, free of/from something— e.g., disease, sickness; thing, affair; fault, defect, imperfection, blemish, vice; debt; claim, due, right— ; in a state of freedom/immunity, secure, safe'. Thus, forms with -u' and -ü' and the same meaning as bur' were present in CA and could have been adopted from there into one or more MA dialects to produce the nouns ending in wâw < CA hamza. Blau (1966-67:88) cites six examples of this noun form. However, I have not been able to check their contexts, and so I cannot tell whether the wâw could represent a case marker in any of them. 133 (I) Christian MA mlw (CA mil') 'full measure*. With mula listed in (A), this is another "new" form for CA mil'. Lane (1863-93:2729) reports that the infinitive nouns of the root m-1-' (verb mala'a 'to fill, satisfy, glut') were mal*- un. mala'-at-un. mil'-at-un. and mall'a. Other nouns of this root were mil'-un 'a thing sufficient in quantity or dimensions for the filling of a vessel, or the quantity that a vessel holds when it is filled'; mal'-un 'an assembly'; (p. 2730) mul'-at-un 'a tremulousness and flabbiness and swelling of the flesh in a camel, in consequence of long confinement after a journey'; mul'-at-un 'the manner in which a thing is filled'; mala'-un and mala'-at-un 'richness, wealthiness, trustiness, or honesty'; mall'-un and maliyv-un 'a rich, wealthy, opulent, man, or trusty, or honest and rich, . . . or one who pays his debts well without giving trouble to his creditor'; mula'-at-un and mul'-at-un and mula'-un 'a defluxion or rheum, occasioned by repletion, or a heaviness in the head'; mula'-at-un 'a piece of drapery which is wrapped about the body' ; and mall '-un 'a majestic person, whose aspect satisfies the eye'. These nouns all have hamza for the third consonant; none of them has replaced it with wâw. Furthermore, Lane (1863-93) does not list m-l-w as a root in CA, showing that mlw was not present as either a recognized noun or root in CA. Therefore, it must have taken on that status in MA. An explanation for this is that it could have been present in ancient Arabic dialectal pronunciations at the 134 status in MA. An explanation for this is that it could have been present in ancient Arabic dialectal pronunciations at the time of CA, described above as reported by Rabin (1951:134), in which -u- was the second vowel of the word. Then such pronunciations could have been reanalyzed as the base form of this word in MA. Blau (1966-67:88) cites one example of this noun form. However, I have not been able to check its context, and so I cannot tell whether the wâw could represent a case marker in this instance. Therefore, since almost all the noun forms listed by Hopkins (1984:21) and Blau (1966-67:88) as occurring in MA with Ill-va*. 'alif. and -wâw < CA Ill-hamza are also listed in Lane (1863-93) as occurring in CA, the occurrence of these nouns in MA cannot be seen as an innovation begun in MA. Rather, it cannot be ruled out that these nouns occurred in MA because they continued the same type of process that had already resulted in the same noun forms occurring in the standard register of Arabic— phonetic developments in the ancient Arabic dialects as reported by Rabin (1951:134) and discussed above. Recognizing regular phonetic developments that began in the ancient Arabic dialects as the original impetus for the creation of this type of noun, then, makes possible a more precise explanation of the development of these nouns than either Blau or Hopkins gives. For example, Blau (1966- 135 from by analogy. But he does not address the question of how nuzw/nuzfl originated. Since it occurred in two CA readings, as reported by Lane (1863-93:418), this shows that it originated before the MA texts were written. But how did the wâw replace the hamza as the third consonant of this noun in these readings? One explanation is that it originated due to vowel harmony, as Blau (1966-67:87-88 REM) asserts. This would mean that it originated as an epenthetic vowel to repeat the -u- in the first syllable or due to continued rounding of the lips after pronunciation of the -u- in the first syllable. However, since consonant clusters were and still are very much a part of Arabic, there is no phonotactic process that would have been an impetus for insertion of a vowel between the two final root consonants. Rather, it seems more likely that one or more other changes that were underway in Arabic and attested for similar words, as reported by Rabin (1951:134), applied to this word as well. Thus, Hijazis would have deleted the hamza and therefore said the nominative, citation form as nuz-u. Writers could have written this form as nzw in order to show what the exact pronunciation of the word was, as they sometimes did before pronoun suffixes. The combination of this regular phonological process plus this MA writing convention is one explanation of the source of the Jzw cited in Lane (1863-93) as the common pronunciation in the Çadlth passage. Then this pronunciation could have been reanalyzed 136 as the base form and spread to the other cases. Also, Tamlmis would have metathesized the hamza and the nominative -u in the pausal citation form so that it became luzu'. and we can hypothesize that this form was then reanalyzed as the base form and spread to other cases. Finally, the other dialects that retained the hamza in pause, by inserting before it a vowel of the same vowel quality as the vowel in the first syllable, would have pronounced this base form luzu' for all cases. Then this form could have been generalized to context position, producing luzu'-ufn). luzu'-ifn) . and luzu'-afn) in a straightforward manner. The other MA nouns Ill-waw < CA Ill-hamza listed by Blau (1966-67:88) and Hopkins (1984:21) would have originated in the same way. Therefore, an appeal to analogy such as Blau (1966-67:87-88 REM and n.20) makes is not only unnecessary but also does not explain the origin of these particular noun forms since they were attested in CA, before the MA texts were written. Furthermore, the existence of these noun forms in CA shows that Blau's (1966-67:88n.20) subsequent conclusion may not be necessary. As noted at the beginning of this section, he says: It seems unlikely that the final ü arose through the influence of the nominative ending u (as is the case in pausal forms in CA. . .). In this case, one would have to consider this phenomenon as an effect produced by the case endings before their disappearance. 137 This conclusion may not be necessary because the various registers of Arabic are not totally isolated from each other so that innovations are limited to only one type of Arabic at a time or are not transferred between types. On the contrary, as documented by modern studies (cf. Cadora 1970:15; Kaye 1972:40), speakers regularly pronounce classical-standard- literary Arabic with features of their dialects. This fact is the basis for the research that enables ancient dialectal pronunciations, for example, to be extrapolated from different early recitations of Qur'anic and Hadlth readings. Therefore, it would actually be likely that changes in pronunciation from CA to MA originated in the same way that the same changes originated in CA. That is, speakers would have adopted a new phonetic or phonological process and generally applied it to their pronunciation, whatever register they were using. It is true that fewer dialectal pronunciations would have been used in formal settings than in informal settings, but dialectalisms do enter formal pronunciations as well as informal ones. Furthermore, later dialectal pronunciations would have continued (and also made further changes in) earlier ones so that dialectal processes present in very early Islamic times, when deviations in early readings of the CA works were being reported, would have continued into later Islamic times and would no doubt have crept into MA writings. Then the resulting innovative pronunciations of individual words could 138 have easily become the new usual pronunciations so that the original environment necessary to create the new pronunciations would not have had to continue to exist in order for the revised pronunciations to exist. Because of this, Blau's (1966-67:8Bn.20) final comment that "one would have to consider this phenomenon [the final 0 arising through the influence of the nominative -u] as an effect produced by the case endings before their disappearance", while true in reference to the beginning of such a change, is not really an objection to a later continuation of the change in the ways just mentioned. Thus, even if there were no evidence of case endings in the MA texts, such an earlier disappearance would not necessitate the conclusion that the case endings could not have been the original impetus for the final hamza in nouns to have become waw. Finally, it seems that Blau's assumption that the case endings had totally disappeared by the time of the MA texts is his reason for turning to analogy as the explanation of the origin of MA nouns ending in waw < CA hamza which did not have -u- in their first syllable, according to his belief that no other explanation would be possible. However, since an alternative explanation (proposed here) exists, it deserves to be considered as well. It is entirely possible that if a new form of noun was created due to influence from the case endings and became recognized by speakers as a new noun form. 139 endings and became recognized by speakers as a new noun form, its spread was facilitated by analogy. However, analogy was not the only possible reason for its original creation. 3.1.2.2.4. Conclusions about Case Endings from this Data These data most obviously provide further evidence that case endings were used in pre- and early Islamic times, since all but one of the MA nouns cited by Hopkins (1984:21-22) and Blau (1966-67:87-88) as exhibiting final va*. 'alif. or waw < CA hamza are listed by Lane (1863-93) as having occurred in CA. This indicates that they were derived before the Arabic grammars that Lane used were written, that is, before the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the 3rd century A.H. Since this is about the time that most of the extant MA texts were written, this indicates that these noun forms had entered Arabic before the time of the MA texts. Since the phonetic processes of various dialects metathesizing the case vowel with the preceding glottal stop, or deleting the glottal stop but retaining the case vowel, listed in Rabin (1951:134), provide a good explanation of the impetus for the nouns in question to change form, I have argued above that case vowels could have been involved in the original creation of the new noun forms. Since these forms were created before the MA texts were written, case vowels must have been in use during the time before these texts. It is possible that the same phonetic processes were still productive during the time the MA texts were written. 140 and so created the same nouns at that time as a synchronic event. It is hard to tell whether this occurred or whether MA simply inherited these nouns from CA or from the dialects CA was based on. However, if MA nouns Ill-waw. Ill-va'. or III- 'alif < CA-hamza occur in MA texts in the appropriate environment for the case vowels -u, -i, or -a to have been used— so that waw. va*. and 'alif. respectively, could have been used to represent them— this would suggest that the phonetic processes were still productive and thus that case vowels were still in use at this time. There is some suggestion from these texts that this could have been the situation in some instances. Further research needs to be done to document this more fully, but the research reported here, discussed in Section 3.1.2.2.3, shows that of the 11 MA noun forms examined here (listed in Table 11), one (Muslim MA bdw) is effaced too badly to tell what case it should have been; one (Christian MA arâv- a) ends in a ta ' marbfl^a which did not vary its final pronunciation at this time— regularly ending in -a in all three cases; four occur seven times where the final long vowels are inappropriate for marking the case of the word; one occurrence of Christian MA hdâ-h. one occurrence of Christian MA bdv. and five occurrences of Christian MA izwfâ) ; while three occur six times in appropriate contexts in the MA texts for the final long vowels to represent case markers: one occurrence of Muslim MA mlv in a genitive context, three 141 and two occurrences of Christian bdw in nominative contexts. The six correct occurrences as opposed to seven incorrect occurrences indicate that these noun forms may have sometimes been formed productively in MA, with the final hamza being replaced by the appropriate case vowel. This seems most likely to have occurred in Muslim MA since, as discussed in Section 3.1.2.2.3, the evidence is good that the va' in mlv represented the genitive case vowel. This position receives further support from Hopkins' (1984) report that tzw did not appear in early papyri, indicating that it was not a set form yet, as it appears to be in Christian MA where its occurrence is very frequent. However, since there are many more instances in Christian MA when the nouns under discussion occur in inappropriate contexts for their final long vowels to represent case markers, this indicates that if this was an active process in MA, it was not fully productive, occurring only sometimes. This last explanation agrees with other evidence adduced in this study for the occurrence of case vowels in Middle Arabic, where there is evidence that case vowels were still used optionally in well-defined contexts. For the MA nouns discussed here, such contexts are after prepositions (genitive = mly and bdv) and as the first word in a title (nominative = bdw). 142 3.2. Nominative -an for Duals and -Gn for Masculine Plurals Hopkins (1984:99) states: In common with the general trend of non-Classical varieties of Arabic, in both the dual and sound masculine plural (§86a) there are no distinctions of case, the only genuine endings of these categories being reflexes of the CA casus obliouus^. However, he follows this broad generalization by admitting (p.99n.l) that " [t]he ending -an for the dual does indeed occur in the papyri in conformity with CA usage, . . . but is very much rarer than the ubiquitous -avn and I have not considered it necessary to record such cases." Regarding the masculine plural, he says (p. 106): Parallel to the general absence of the status rectus in the dual (§85a) is the occurrence of the same phenomenon in the sound masculine plural, where the only living ending is a reflex of the CA casus oblicnius. viz. -In irrespective of case.’ He follows this broad generalization by saying, "[t]he sound masculine plural ending in -On. . . . , though it does occur, is in fact very rare. ..." While the preponderance of one ending only— the oblique— for these two case markers is quite significant for establishing that MA texts deviated noticeably from CA’°, the existence of some instances of the nominative ending is significant for establishing when the more differentiated system was still in use. ’°Hopkins (1984:106) sums up the importance by saying, " [t]he existence of a single form only in each of these two categories (i.e. dual: -avn. sound masculine plural: -In) is one of the key features separating the language of the papyri (and all other varieties of vernacular Arabic) from CA." 143 The occurrences of the nominative endings which are cited by Hopkins (1984:99n.l) for the dual ending and (1984:106n.2) for the masculine ending are listed in Table 12. Table 12 Nominative Endings for Duals and Masculine Plurals^ (cited by Hopkins 1984:88, 99n.l, 106n.2) MA Dual for CA Meaning Page Sltln hmyrytân Salÿ-ânihimyarît-âni 'knives-DU 88;99 Himyarl-DU' 0l6wn dynr 0ala0-üna dinar '30-NOM dinar' 106 w-ntin sllmwn wa-na&nu sâlim-üna 'and we well 106 ^al%iwn çâli^-üna healthy' *Since, as mentioned above, Hopkins did not attempt to record all the instances of these phenomena, this is not a complete listing of all the occurrences in the papyri. One explanation of these examples is that the "standard" CA case system for dual nouns and masculine plural nouns was still used optionally in Muslim MA. In order to determine to what extent this occurred, an extensive search of the papyri for such instances needs to be done. The fact that the evidence examined earlier in this chapter suggests that case marking was used optionally for single nouns in Muslim MA suggests that the possibility should be considered that this was also done for numbers greater than one. Taken together, all the evidence considered in this chapter presents the possibility for consideration that the case system was 144 partially active in colloquial Arabic at this time, although it was not fully productive. 3.3. Conclusions The data examined in this chapter suggest that occurrences of waw. va*. and 'alif contrary to CA usage in Muslim Middle Arabic papyri may not be only slight deviations in orthographic usage during a time in which case endings were no longer in use in the spoken language, as they have been previously interpreted. Rather, another conclusion they suggest for consideration is that case endings were in use optionally in spoken Arabic in recurring specifiable environments at the time the Muslim Middle Arabic texts were written. This conclusion is most persuasive in the light of instances examined in Section 3.1 in which waw. va'. and 'alif (the Arabic letters for semi-vowels/long vowels) occur before pronoun suffixes in contexts where hamza plus the corresponding short case vowel (-u, -i, -a, respectively) would be appropriate. This occurs for some words in which CA would pronounce -â'-u-, -â'-i-, and â'-a-, realized sometimes in the MA texts as -âw-, -ây-, and -â-. As argued by Hopkins (1984:20-24), the fact that at least the waws and va's in these MA words represent case vowels is shown by comparisons with other instances of the same words occurring without these letters in the same text or archive. 145 In addition, it is argued in Section 3.1.2.1 that the same usage of semi-vowels to represent case vowels occurs occasionally for words which CA would pronounce with -â'-i-, in which va* with two dots is written following the 'alif. This is the only possible explanation for these nouns since if nothing had been pronounced after the 'alif and before the pronoun suffix, there is no reason that anything would have been written. The fact that these representations of case vowels in the MA texts occur before pronoun suffixes indicates that this is one environment in which case vowels were preserved optionally longer than elsewhere. This can be explained by the fact that case vowels were "protected" by the suffix from being dropped. This phenomenon is an internally motivated one, due to language change factors in Arabic and not due to external factors such as language contact, as shown by the preservation in the modern dialects of morphological features when followed by pronoun suffixes. Protection by suffixes of morphological features which are not pronounced in all environments has been seen elsewhere in this dissertation. It was first mentioned in Chapter I, Section 1.1 in conjunction with the modern Arabic dialects which, for example, pronounce the -t of the feminine singular marker /-at/ only before pronoun suffixes and nouns which are in a possessive relationship to the previous noun. As explained there, this results in pronunciations such as Levantine [jæm'^-It-u] ('his 146 university,' lit. ' univers ity-F. SG-his ' ) and [5âëm®-It-h3] ('her university, ' lit. 'university-F.SG-her ' ) for underlying /5âm®-at/ ('university,' lit. 'university-F.SG'), which is pronounced []æm"^-9] at all other times than when it is in a possessive relationship with a following pronoun or noun. Preservation of morphological features by suffixes was also mentioned in Chapter II, Section 2.3.4 for Egyptian Arabic, which preserves the genitive and accusative case vowels before the 3M.SG and 3F.SG suffix -k. This results in, for example, [bëtak] for /*bet-a-ka/ ('house-ACC-your-M.SG') and [bëtik] for /*bët-i-ki/ ('house-GEN-your-F.SG'). Therefore, the optional use of case vowels before pronoun suffixes seen in this chapter is not only evidence that case vowels were still available for use in Muslim MA. It is also some of the earliest evidence we have that Arabic was undergoing the historical change of preserving morphological features before pronoun suffixes. Furthermore, examination in this chapter of similar phenomena in which long vowels replace root-final hamza in nouns (discussed in Section 3.1.2.2) shows that additional explanations beyond those that have been offered previously deserve further attention. One such explanation is that these MA nouns were continuations of phenomena that began in CA. In such a situation, they would have been either (1) continuations of old forms that were confused with the standard forms intended to be used in these texts, or (2) 147 continuations of dialectal phenomena which created deviations from the standard forms in earlier times. If, in fact, they represent the latter, one explanation of the forms is that the preservation of case vowels in some dialects is shown in these words, in which the case vowels were indicated by long vowels, in the same way that the long vowels were used in the examples discussed in Section 3.1. Of the 11 forms examined in Sections 3.1.2.2.1-3, nearly half of the occurrences (six) are in appropriate contexts in the MA texts for the long vowels to represent case markers, while the other half (seven) are not. This suggestion that the long vowels in question represent case vowels seems most likely for the Muslim MA forms since the evidence indicates that the long vowel in mlv probably did represent a case vowel. For Christian MA, however, the many occurrences of the long vowels in contexts inappropriate for these vowels to be case markers suggests that if this was a productive process, it was not fully productive but was, rather, optional. This conclusion agrees with the results in Section 3.1, that case vowels were retained optionally in MA, in well-defined contexts. For the words examined in Sections 3.1.2.2.1-3, these contexts are after prepositions and as the first word in a title. Finally, in the papyri the "correct" (according to rules of CA usage) nominative marker is sometimes used for duals (- an) and masculine plurals (-ün) instead of the more prevalent oblique markers (-ayn and -In) being used everywhere. One 148 explanation of this phenomenon is that the more differentiated "standard” CA system of two case markers for each of these numbers was still in use optionally. Further research would allow us to determine whether there were limited, specified environments where this occurred, as there were for the other phenomena examined in this chapter. CHAPTER IV EVIDENCE FROM SOUTHERN PALESTINIAN CHRISTIAN MIDDLE ARABIC TEXTS^ 4.0. Introduction Chapter IV examines evidence from published versions of Christian Middle Arabic documents^ from the 8th-12th centuries A.D., for the insights these texts provide about whether case endings were used in dialectal Arabic at this time. As noted by Blau (1966-67:20), most of these are from the 9th and 10th centuries and "were copied in the monasteries of South- Palestine, including Sinai, and preserved mainly in the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. . . ." Specifically, the evidence examined is the data on the case system cited by Blau (1966-67) from Southern Palestinian Christian Middle Arabic texts (abbreviated ASP, for Ancient South Palestinian) and from one 8th century bi-lingual Greek- Arabic fragment of Psalm 78, discovered in Damascus. This is the same type of evidence as that examined in Chapter III, but from a slightly later time period and from a ’chapter IV is largely derived from Gruber-Miller (1990) . ^See Chapter I, Section 1.3.2.1 for an overview of Middle Arabic texts. 149 150 different population. While Chapter III examines evidence from documents written by Muslims mainly for Muslims, Chapter IV examines evidence from documents written by Christians for Christians. Since these Christians were writing to members of their own community and were under no religious pressure to conform to the ideal language of the Qur'an— as Muslims were, these manuscripts contain numerous deviations from CA, many of which are considered to be dialectalisms.% Blau (1966-67:20) expresses great appreciation for these manuscripts for their value in ascertaining elements of colloquial Arabic at the time when he says, "the numerous South-Palestinian ChA texts contain so many MA phenomena that a quite ample description of ASP can be based on them." Accordingly, since the evidence examined in Chapter IV is so plentiful, it is some of the best evidence available from early Islamic times for examining whether case endings were used at this time (along with Muslim MA, for different reasons, as discussed in Section 3.0). This chapter also proposes for consideration additional analyses of this data. Furthermore, it evaluates, in light of the new analyses, three of the previous hypotheses which propose in some detail how the modern situation arose through phonological and morphological changes. The analyses ^Following Blau (1966-67), scientific literature written or translated by Christians is not treated here. His explanation (p. 20n.4) of why this literature is not analyzed suffices: "since being addressed to the general public, it is written in a language containing less MA elements and therefore much less suitable for the study of MA." 151 evaluated here are those of Birkeland (1952), Cantineau (1934), and Blau (1961, 1966-67, 1981). The reanalysis suggests some new conclusions about cases in this dialect and the changes that brought about the situation, supporting some of the previous analyses and calling others into question. The claims of previous theories which this data specifically bears on are listed in (1). Each is discussed in turn in Section 4.1, along with the results of the reanalysis which bear on each claim. (1) Previous Claims from the ASP Data (A) Vowels weakened and dropped in ASP. (Blau and Cantineau) (B) A stress shift occurred in ASP. (Blau) (C) Case endings had been dropped in ASP. (Blau and Violet) (D) Loss of single vowel case endings was due just to loss of final short vowels. (Cantineau) OR: Loss of single vowel case endings was due to more than loss of final short vowels, one additional factor being generalization of pausal forms to context position. (Birkeland and Blau) (E) The accusative case was the last case lost in singular and broken (= irregular) plural nouns. (Blau and Cantineau) (F) After all the other changes occurred, the oblique case (genitive accusative) replaced the nominative 152 case in dual nouns and masculine sound (= regular) plurals. (Blau) 4.1.0. Results of the Reanalvsis 4.1.1. Claim A: Vowels The reanalysis of the ASP data shows that vowels did weaken and drop in ASP, in support of that claim made by Blau and Cantineau. Evidence for this comes largely from an 8th century fragment of Psalm 78 found in Damascus. While more work needs to be done on this text to isolate characteristics due to geographical and dialectal variants, the research presented here builds on that done by Blau (1966-67), who expressed the opinion (p. 31) that the language of this text does not differ substantially from the South Palestinian vernaculars. As mentioned in Chapter I, Section 1.3.2.1, the psalm is written entirely in Greek letters and includes the original Greek text and a translation into Arabic. This text is the only ASP text which indicates all the Arabic vowels— including the short vowels— since it is written in Greek. It thus provides a rare window on the full vocalization of (at least the scribe's) Arabic* at the time the text was written. Violet (1901.10:384-403) discovered it, copied it by hand, typeset it, and then analyzed it (1901.11:425-441). Kahle *Violet (1901.11:425) observes: "Diese [Psalmfragment (AG-M)] vermag uns einen, wenn auch unvollstandigen Begriff von der Aussprache des Übersetzers zu geben, cder jedenfalls von der Aussprache dessen, der diese Transscription gemacht hat, wenn derselbe not dem Ùbersetzer nicht identisch sein sollte." 153 (1904:XIV-XV and 32-35) typeset it and commented briefly on it, making a few corrections from Violet's version. Blau (1966-67) used Kahle's version, occasionally taking issue with it. I use Kahle's version unless otherwise specified since it is the most recent complete rendering which includes corrections. The ASP words which Blau (1966-67:63-65) cites® that show changes from CA are listed in Table 13, with the changes underlined. ®Blau (1966-67:63-65) also cites three instances of ASP u which he says were written for CA a. These are: (1) ASP muaadira for CA ma-aadir-a 'ability', lit. 'noun-can-F.SG'; (2) ASP vu^rub for CA va-(^rub 'he will beat', lit. '3M.SG.IMPERF-beat'; (3) ASP vusir for CA va-slr 'he will become', lit. '3M.SG.IMPERF-become'. Actually, however, the data seem to indicate that these instances may represent morphological, rather than phonetic, substitution. This is so because all of the examples that Blau cites exhibit the substitution in a prefix: instance (1) of mu- for ma- (prefixes for verbal nouns), and instances (2) and (3) of yu- for ya- (prefixes for imperfect active verbs). Since these prefixes which contain the u occur in Arabic— and frequently— it would not be surprising if the non-native speakers of Arabic occasionally mixed up the prefixes which contained u and a. If ASP u for CA a were a phonological change, one would expect to also find it in environments other than those which are morphologically defined (here, prefixes). Since it seems, therefore, that the u for a substitutions noted by Blau should not be included in data showing that vowel quality in ASP was inconstant, these examples are not included in Table 13. 154 Table 13 ASP Words with Vowel Qualities that Differ from CA (cited by Blau 1966-67:63-65) Occur ASP Vowel CA Vowel Meaningfor rences (underlined) (underlined) 8 (1-3) oe.A,e.ufii e.ù wa-l-'awdiya 'and the streams' and-DEF-streams (4) keyaX la'^al 1 ' perhaps ' (5) i6.K.6ip ya-qdir 'can' 3M.SG.IMPERF-can (6-7) exTey.aXeT iâta®al-at 'was kindled' kindle/PASSIVE- 3F.SG.PERF (8) (1) aejia aana sama' 'heaven' (2 ) Xevn'Xavn la-hum 'to them' to-them (1) yeSSa ]iddan 'much' (2) exTey.aXer i§ta*^al-at 'was kindled' kindle/PASSIVE- 3F.SG.PERF u (1) sulm silm 'peace' (2) mus^i misÇi 'haircloth' u (1) T.Jl.OUp tuyur 'fowels' 1 (1) HanppH mamrâ 'Mamre' (2) tpaaèXer fa-sâl-at 'and it gushed out' and-gush out- 3F.SG.PERF (3) Ai 6é.AiK liôllik 'therefore' (4) iXè 'ilâ 'to' 155 The data in Table 13 show that CA a, i, u, and â were subject to phonological change in this scribe's ASP and that, in general, the change was centralization— a type of weakening: a >e, i > e, and a > ë. Also, occasionally i and u were interchanged, which could also suggest centralization if the pronunciation moved from peripheral toward central so that hearers perceived each sound as falling within the other's phoneme boundary. If ASP hearers perceived the vowels as different from those in CA, then ASP writers would probably have sometimes written them as different vowels, as in Table 13. In addition to centralization, the ASP data also show that short vowels were deleted in open unstressed syllables— especially word finally— since Blau (1966-67:62) reports that a sukfln (a symbol in the Arabic writing system which indicates the lack of a vowel following a consonant) is sometimes written in ASP at the ends of words which ended in a short vowel in CA. Blau (1966-67:62) also reports that an 'alif (a symbol in the Arabic writing system which indicates a glottal stop followed by a vowel) is sometimes added in ASP before an initial consonant that was followed by a short vowel in an open unstressed syllable in CA. He reasons that a vowel was added before the initial consonant of the word to break up the consonant cluster which resulted from the unstressed vowel following this consonant being dropped. For example, he notes 156 that CA Slyhm ( [®alayhlm] ) was written in ASP as '*^lvhin (probably [ ' a^layhlm] ). 4.1.2. Claim B; Stress Shift Regarding Blau's claim that a stress shift occurred, the data show that a stress shift may have occurred, but it does not show that it definitely occurred. It shows only what was discussed in Section 4.1.1 for Claim A— that vowel centralization occurred. It does not give enough evidence for us to be able to decide about a stress shift. Blau (1961:213, 221, 227) states that a change in stress was a factor in bringing about the vowel changes. Citing Weil (1954, 1958), Blau says that CA must have had "weakly centralizing" stress because short vowels were preserved, but that the stress must have shifted to "strongly centralizing" in Middle Arabic (which includes ASP, Judaeo Middle Arabic, and Muslim Middle Arabic) because short vowels were then "blurred" or elided in open unstressed syllables. Blau (1961:215n.28) further states that "[n]evertheless, it is probable that strong, fixed expiratory accent already existed in some ancient Arabic dialects," citing Rabin (1955:36) who quotes Birkeland (1954:12). Therefore, by "strongly centralizing", Blau must mean having a "strong, fixed expiratory accent" which facilitates vowel reduction and elision in the syllables that are not stressed.* *Rabin says that the ancient eastern Arabic dialects had "strong fixed expiratory stress" (1955:36) or "expiratory or stress accent" (1951:102) which meant that "slight expiratory 157 Blau's conclusion is consistent with the ASP facts, and so it is a possible explanation for them. It is widely accepted that vowels which get centralized/reduced are generally unstressed, often occur in open syllables, and are often subsequently lost. Therefore, it would be expected that if the stress in Arabic had changed from the non-stress type in CA to the stress-type in ASP, which favors more centralization and elision of vowels, then the situation just noted would occur— more vowels would show centralization and loss. However, the existence of this situation does not require that a shift in the type of stress occurred. Since vowel centralization often occurs whenever a syllable is unstressed (although, of course, it does not have to occur then), it could have happened in any unstressed syllables, regardless of prominence is lent to syllables by factors such as emphasis and sentence rhythm" (1951:102). He says (1951:102) that such a stress accent "brought about the reduction and complete elision of some vowels" and, furthermore, (1955:37) that it was "a fairly recent innovation." He also says (1951:102) that the ancient West Arabian dialects had "the opposite, non- expiratory type of accent." He sums up the situation (pp. 104-105) thus: It seems . . . pretty well established that West- Arabian did not possess an expiratory stress. This characteristic has come down to the colloquials now spoken on old West-Arabian territory and to some colloquials outside Arabia which are connected with West-Arabian, but . . . not to all. Classical Arabic sides with West-Arabian where effects of accent are concerned, [sic] we may therefore assume that the dialects on which it was based did not have expiratory stress either. The Eastern dialects in which we find such a powerful stress accent must have acquired it comparatively late. 158 the overall pattern of stress in the language; it does not need to be preceded by a change in the stress type. Many of the syllables in which the vowels were reduced or lost in ASP could have been unstressed in CA but not have undergone vowel reduction or loss yet. If this were the case, then ASP would simply be the stage at which the vowel changes occurred, after the impetus for the changes already existed at an earlier stage. Furthermore, centralization also sometimes occurs in stressed syllables, as in a few of the examples in Table 13; the ASP renderings of CA ista^^alat. i iddan. silm. mish. fasalat. and liôâlik. It regularly does so in modern Arabic dialects in which stressed i and u fall together (e.g.. Damascene Arabic)While the changes in stressed syllables do not play a role in Blau's statements that a stress shift occurred from CA to Middle Arabic, the facts that such changes did occur sometimes in ASP and do occur regularly in modern Arabic dialects is further support for the argument that the data do not show that such a stress shift had to have occurred; centralization occurs both in stressed and in unstressed syllables. ^I am grateful to Charles Ferguson for reminding me of this similarity with the modern dialects, at the First Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, April 25-26, 1986, held at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. 159 4.1.3. Claim C; Case Endings The data show that case endings had disappeared in most but not all environments by the time of ASP. Violet (1901.11:438) recognizes this when he states, "It easily catches the eye that the unstressed endings of the substantive, etc., have to a great extent already disappeared." (AG-M) He lists 17 examples of case endings missing in the psalm fragment (not an exhaustive list), and two examples in which case vowels are present. However, he does not present an explanation of the situation. Blau (1966-67:317-45), on the other hand, concludes from the small number of case endings in ASP manuscripts that case endings had been lost by this time and that their occasional use in manuscripts was due to either hyper- or hypo-correction or to reinterpretation, with the reinterpreted former case endings now having a function other than that of signalling case. The analysis presented here, though, suggests that a slightly different interpretation is possible— that case vowels had not fallen completely out of use by the time of ASP. It suggests, further, that the CA genitive marker -i had become a prepositional case marker in ASP. Examination of the occurrences of vowels in the Greek-Arabic psalm, as well as long vowels in other ASP texts, reveals that they were sometimes used in specific, limited environments, where their placement suggests their purpose could have been to signal case. For example, the data show some appropriate vowels in 160 case marking position at the ends of nouns and before pronoun suffixes. This suggests that case endings had not always been dropped in these positions. The data also show some "incorrect" vowels (according to CA usage) in case position. This suggests that the form of a case vowel had sometimes been retained in these positions but no longer marked the particular case it did in CA. There is also evidence that appropriate case vowels (according to CA usage) may have been retained longer when directly preceded by a marker— such as a preposition— which signalled that a case ending would be appropriate. The data here suggest, further, that the former genitive case vowel -i had been reinterpreted as a prepositional marker, and therefore that there was a prepositional case at this time. As Blau (1966-67:317-18) reports, except for one word (yeSSa for iiddan 'much', where -a for -a- marks the accusative case), the Greek/Arabic psalm fragment exhibits no case endings at the ends of words. Violet (1901.11:438) gives a partial listing— 10 instances, including yeSSa— of nouns that do not have these endings or tanwln (addition of -n to signify indefiniteness) in the psalm. Blau's examples are reproduced here in (4a-c), with the positions of the dropped endings underlined. There are actually many more instances of case endings not being used in the psalm than either researcher lists. 161 (4) (Underlining of a blank space in the ASP text indicates the place where a CA letter would have occurred. Underlining in the corresponding CA word shows the CA letters that are not indicated in the ASP text.) ASP; for CA; (a) oaxou/3C ... wa-xubz-a-n and-bread-ACC-INDEF H&iSeii ^ ...ma'id-at-a-n ...table-F .SG-ACC-INDEF 'and bread...table' (b) Auxou/i___ luhum-a-n meat-ACC-INDEF 'meat' (c) oafikQX_. pafiX_. wa-mi8l-a raml-i-1-biahür and-as-ACC sand-GEN-DEF-sea el#ou%oup* 'and as the sand of the sea' ®The final character here probably indicated a final [h] sound, which some researchers have argued is pronounced at the end of a word when the -t of the feminine -at is dropped in pause position. ’Blau (1966-67:318) cites miGli (GEN) in this phrase, while Kahle (1904:35) cites it as miSla (ACC). In my view, it should be ACC -a because it occurs here to modify the verb, which requires the accusative case in Arabic. The sentence is: wa-'am^ar-a ®alay-him mi01-a and-shower-3M.SG.PERF on-them like-ACC t-turab-i luhOm-a-n wa-mi01-a raml-i DEF-dust-GEN flesh-ACC-INDEF and-like-ACC sand-GEN 1-buÿür-i tuyOr-a-n mu]nahat-a-n. DEF-seas-GEN birds-ACC-INDEF winged-ACC-INDEF. 'And he showered flesh on them like dust and winged birds like the sand of the seas.' 162 However, other examples from the ends of words in ASP show that the form which marked the cases in CA did not always disappear in ASP. Rather, sometimes it still occurred in the appropriate position but seems not to have been carrying out its former function since it is the "incorrect" vowel according to CA usage. Blau (1966-67:320) cites two of these examples as evidence that the cases had been lost in ASP, but does not discuss them in more detail. These examples are given in (5a-b), with the letters which may be meant as case markers underlined. Since these examples are in Arabic script, short vowels are not indicated, and so CA *ab and 'ax are written as 2b and However, the letters which may be case endings in these examples are indicated by long vowels and so are represented by the script. Also, in previous papers on this topic (Miller 1986a, Gruber-Miller 1990) I suggested that, although not likely, the Greek e. — which occurs in this phrase after the Greek for rami— could be the case vowel at the end of rami. Based on Blau (1966-67), I discussed the word as ramli in those papers. However, examination of Violet's (1901:392) hand rendering of the psalm fragment shows that this is not the situation. The e in question is on the line following rami, close to the 1 of the following definite article, indicating that it is part of the definite article (*al in Arabic, always written as eX in the psalm fragment). 163 (5) (a) ASP; 1 y'^qüb 'x-ü rb-nâ to James brother lord-our •to James, the brother of our lord' (b) ASP: rsal-at y®qOb 'x-0 rb-nâ epistle-F.SG James brother lord-our 'the epistle of James, the brother of our lord ' In these, the noun 'ax (here 2x) 'brother', which is in the construct state, ends in the form of a CA case marker which is incorrect for this context: nominative -O instead of genitive -1^®. This word-final vowel is clearly a remnant of the case system, so exploring such occurrences should tell us something about the history of the loss of this system. Therefore, these examples reveal more than is indicated by Blau's general statement that the prevalence of the ending -O in 'ab and 'ax in all contexts is evidence that the cases had been lost. Such occurrences show, in addition, something in these environments that is different from the environments in which there is no trace left of the case endings. Since the endings here are retained in the form of some case marker at the end of the word but appear to no longer be functional as case markers (because they are not the correct form and so do not convey information about the case of the noun), this environment is preserving case vowels for some reason that other environments did not. Assuming the loss of cases was ’®Hence the absence of a gloss for -u in these examples. 164 diffusionary, these words could be at one of the two chronological ends of the process of loss. It could be one of the first environments in which the case vowels were confused, thereby giving an impetus to the rest of the system to confuse them and eventually lose them. On the other hand, it could be one of the last environments to lose these endings, stopping short of total loss of the form, or having not yet totally lost the form by the time of ASP. These possibilities are worth pursuing, and they merit investigation beyond the observation that the old case system had broken down by this time. The questions to be asked are: "How had the system broken down?" and "Was some part of the system still left, albeit in a different form?" As evidenced by the Greek/Arabic psalm fragment, the CA case markers are often omitted in ASP before attached pronoun suffixes. Violet (1901.11:438) lists eight of the nine nouns in the fragment that definitely appear to show no case vowel in this environment.’’ Blau (1966-67:318n.3) cites two of these, including the questionable Ka6.gô-i (which he cites as Koa.gAu), and claims that they represent the actual ASP usage. The one clear example he gives of this is listed in (6), with ’’violet (1901.11:438) omits vaXaa.û— and the questionable here, apparently inadvertently since on p. 431 he includes them in a discussion of words in the fragment that end in the masculine singular suffix. His omission of the second of these two words appears to be correct, though, since the last letter is unclear, and anything that might have followed it has been effaced— being on a page that Kahle did not even analyze because too much was missing. 165 the position underlined where the case marker would have occurred in CA but did not occur in the ASP manuscript. Blau also claims that Kag.aôu shows the genuinely MA form— presumably [kddz-hu] for CA [qudz-i-hl] 'of his sanctuary', with omission of the CA genitive case vowel -i- as well as use of the nominative -hu rather than the genitive -hi that would be correct here. As stated above in footnote 4, I do not think this word should be taken as evidence of anything, since anything after g in the manuscript is unclear according to Violet's rendition of it. Violet's first suggested alternate to KaS.arù^ is KcS.ai) (p. 431) anyiiay, suggesting that, at the most, he felt this shows only the loss of the case vowel. He mentions the possibility of Ka5a6u in footnote l, admitting that this is a very questionable reading. However, this is the reading that Blau chooses to use and base his conclusion on. (6) M P : for CA: Xe.v.o€T_.v/i âahw-at-a-hum desire-FEM SG-ACC-their (MASC) 'their desire' In other examples, the case endings do occur before pronoun suffixes in ASP, as shown by the Greek/Arabic psalm fragment. Violet (1901.11:438) says only that two words (listed here in 7a-b with the case endings underlined) are "opposed" to the set above, and that a third (listed here in 7c) is similar. Blau (1966-67:318n.3) cites the first two 166 (7a-b) as instances in which case endings occurred due to the influence of CA? that is, he claims that they were hyper corrections. He does not mention the example in (7c) in this regard. (7) M P : for CA: (a) /3[. ]au.0&v hi-'aw9ln-i-him with-idols-GEN-their (M) 'with their idols' (b) prf.iiev.xoMTè.Tïi.vn bi-manxüt-ât-i-him with-graven image-F.PL- GEN-their (M) 'with their graven images' (c) /XI01" a./Sa.jL.u/x" miGla 'âbâ'-i-him like fathers-GEN-their (M) 'like their fathers' There are two issues here: (l) whether these words exhibit case endings, when no other words in the Greek/Arabic psalm fragment appear to, and (2) whether these words exhibit hyper-corrections and thus indicate that the speaker had a different rule than the CA rule for case usage, showing that this was a point of weakness in the grammar. These possibilities are discussed separately below. The two sources which comment on this psalm, Violet and Blau, both indicate that they think the examples in (7a-b) exhibit case endings, and there is no apparent reason to argue otherwise. The other obvious possibility is that the vowels 167 here could be epenthetic to avoid long closed syllables ($CV;C$) since Arabic rarely permits these. Wright (1974[1896]i:15B) states, "The Arabs do not readily tolerate a syllable containing a long vowel and terminating in a consonant." He further says (1974[1896]i:26C): The vowel of a syllable that terminates in a consonant, which we call a shut or compound syllable, is almost always short; as kOl. not [qui] (Heb [kol]). Generally speaking, it is only in pause, where the final short vowels are suppressed, that the ancient Arabic admits of such syllables as in. un. an. etc. However, the possibility of adding an epenthetic vowel after long closed syllables which are not in pause in the psalm is not borne out by the evidence. First, none of the other words in the psalm fragment which contain a long closed syllable before a pronoun suffix have a vowel added to re- syllabify such an unacceptable sequence. These are listed in (8a-c) with underlining indicating where such a vowel would be expected. The numbers at the left in these and following examples refer to page and line numbers in Kahle's version. (8) ASP; for CA: 32.11 (a) yaXa %elcKcr_ùt ®ala xalas-i-hl in salvation-GEN-his 'in his salvation' 34.5 (b) %auA &awla xiyam-i-him around tents-GEN-their (M) 'around their tents' 168 (8 continued) ASP; for CA: 34.15 (c) %e.ùa.a_[.]TÙ Sahâd-ât-u-hü testimony-F.PL-NOM-his 'his testimony' Furthermore, of these five words (7a and b, 8a-c), only uev.yovrè.rn.vu (7b) has the consonant placed into a separate syllable from the preceding long vowel, as indicated by the dots within the word. The other word which added the vowel following the consonant fau.8&v.iùa [7a]) does not change the syllable structure to take advantage of the added vowel; it does not have the consonant separated into a different syllable from the preceding long vowel. Thus, it seems unlikely that the vowels preceding the pronouns in (7a) and (7b) are epenthetic to preserve acceptable Arabic syllable structure since the syllable structure has not been changed consistently to correspond with this possible reason of adding the vowel. This is supported further by the fact that the problematic $CV:C$ syllable structure appears not to be a problem in the other three words listed in (8a-c) since this structure has not been modified by adding a vowel following the syllable-final consonant. It seems to me that the example given in (7c) also shows a case vowel before the attached pronoun suffix, although neither Violet nor Blau treats it that way. Violet (1901.11:438) says that a.Ba.i .i>u (7c) "is similar to" ai) .9&V .1 i>u (7a) and uev .vovrè. rrt.iu (7b)— referring to some 169 sort of i symbol occurring before the suffix— but that the l_ in a.Ba.i .ùu represents the symbol which signifies the glottal stop consonant /'/ medially in the Arabic word rather than the vowel /i/ as in the other two words. The evidence, however, points to a larger role for the symbol l_ in a.Ba.i .vu and throughout the psalm in other words in which Violet (1901.11:437) identifies i. as representing the Arabic symbols for /'/ initially and medially. First, it seems that in these words the symbol i. does not represent just the glottal stop consonant /'/ (whether written in Arabic initially, medially, or finally) since it is used for /'/ in only one environment in the psalm— preceding /i/. It is never used for /'/ in the psalm where the Arabic word has 'a-, 'e-, -V'C-, or - V # (occurring word finally only when a case or verb ending is dropped). Rather, in these words, the scribe did not indicate any consonant where Arabic indicates /'/, as shown by the examples in (9a-o). These examples are all the instances of this environment whose rendering in Violet's version of the psalm is clear. Places where the /'/ could be indicated are underlined. ’^The few instances in which i. represents Arabic /y/ or possibly /i/ in the psalm are not disputed here. They are discussed further below. 170 (9) ASP; for CA: 32.1 (a) oeA Eufieù. wa-l-2awdiyy-at-u and-DEF-streams-F-NOM 'and the streams' 32.3 (b) _€U' lou.6eiei_‘ law yu-hayyil-u or 3M.IMPERF-prepare- SG.IMPERF 'or he prepares' 32.9 (c) li'anna-hum because-they (M) i ou _ji [ I... ] lam yu-lmin-ü NEG 3.M .IMPERF-believe- M.PL.JUSSIVE 'because they did not believe' 32.11 (d) oa‘ jatixap wa-lamar-a and-command-3M.SG.PERF 'and he commanded' 32.11 (e) oa _0!/5oajS wa-labwab-a- and-doors-ACC- ekaana_ s-samal-i DEF-heaven-GEN 'and the doors of heaven' 171 (9 continued) ASP: for CA: 32.13, (f) GO! _a/i.Tttp wa-lamÿar-a 32.21 and-shower-3M.SG.PERF •and he showered' 32.19 (g) jot.vày. 2ahâ]-a stir up-3M.SG.PERF 'he stirred up' 32.19 (h) /iiv eX.aeiia_ min-as-sama^-i from DEF-heaven-GEN oa are wa-lata (3M.SG.PERF) and-brought forth ' from heaven and he brought forth' 34.5 (i) 0a._axeAoû fa-2akal-ü and so-eat-3.M.PL 'and so they ate' 34.17 (j) _a./3a.i .ù/i' 2âbâ'-i-him fathers-GEN-their 'their fathers' 34.19 (k) eX yavyé_' l-Caw]â_L-i DEF-deceitful-GEN 'the deceitful' 34.21 (1) _g.Ya.poü.ù ^ayâr-ü-hü anger-3M.PL.PERF-him 'they angered him' 172 (9 continued) ASP for CA; 34.23 (m) oa‘ _a%,aa wa-J.aqsa (3M.SG.PERF) and-forsook 'and he forsook' 34.25 (n) _ea.%Ev" ^askun-a dwell-3M.SG.PERF 'he dwelt' 34.27 (o) oa' _qa.[.]€[.] wa-iaslam-a and-surrender-3M.SG.PERF 'and he surrendered' As noted above, the only places in which the symbol i. is used in this psalm to represent /'/ are those in which /'/ is followed by /i/ in the Arabic word. These are listed in (10a- f), where this environment is underlined. The page number preceded by V refers to Violet's version. Kahle did not analyze this page of the psalm because he felt too much of it was missing. (10) ASP: for CA: 32.3 (a) n&i_Set‘ ma ' id-at-a-n table-F.SG-ACC-INDEF 'a table' 32.7 (b) l_CTparjA ' isra ' il Israel 173 (10 continued) ASP; for CA: 34.13 (c) eA.i.A&A" l-^ilah-a DEF-god-ACC •God' 34.17 (d) a./3a.i..û/Li 'âbâ'-i-him fathers-GEN-their 'their fathers' 34.23 (e) ■ i_apa.[.]A li-'isra'il to-Israel V. 396.17 (f) U é lilâ 'to' Since the words listed in (lOa-f) are the only ones in the psalm in which is used to represent /'/, it seems that in these instances i. does not represent only the glottal stop consonant but, rather, that it represents either the glottal stop plus the following vowel /i/ or just the vowel /i/ with no representation of the glottal stop. The first possibility is supported by the facts that /'i/ occurs in these Arabic words where I. occurs in the text and that vowels are indicated throughout the psalm except in some suffixes— the feminine singular suffix -a(t) and possibly the masculine singular and plural suffixes -hu and -hum.’^ The second possibility is ’Violet (1901.11:§431) says that in suffixes the symbol Ù stands for the Arabic letter for /h/ plus a vowel, but this is not clearly the case for the masculine singular suffix - hu/-hi since in one word it is clearly written with the vowel indicated separately from the symbol 6, and in a few other words it may be written like this also. To me this indicates that û stands for the consonant only, and the vowel 174 supported by the facts that the glottal stop is not indicated elsewhere in the psalm— only the following vowel is indicated- -and that no other symbol in the psalm stands for CV, except possibly 6 when in a suffix, although never in the word stem. While it seems impossible to decide definitively between these two options as to the exact sound(s) that i. represents, it seems clear from the evidence that this symbol is used where Arabic has a glottal stop and that at least the vowel /i/ is to be included in what i. represents in these places. This means that /i/ is represented just before the suffix in a.Ba.i .tu.. This is further supported by the fact that this word has a dot on each side of the symbol i_, probably indicating that this is a syllable unto itself. Since /'/ cannot be a syllable by itself, i. must represent either /i/ or /'i/ here. Since /i/ is not part of the stem, i. probably represents a case vowel— here, the genitive -i. As in (7a-b), I. here could also be an epenthetic vowel to prevent the phonotactically problematic syllable -bâ'- from occurring. This could only be possible if stands for li, which seems less likely than its being a case vowel, for the reasons given above for preferring the case vowel interpretation in (7a-b). Therefore, perhaps it is a case vowel serving the dual purpose of marking case and preserving phonotactic constraints. In is occasionally indicated as well. However, the evidence is slim for both positions. Where the vowel is not indicated, it may have been elided in pronunciation. 175 such a situation, it would be retained here as a case marker because it is needed for phonotactic reasons. There are two other words in the psalm which contain / ' i/ but do not represent this sequence by l_ as is done in the words listed in (10). Rather, these words use jl (without a hook) in this position. They are listed in (lla-b), with the place underlined where /'i/ occurs. (11) ASP: for CA: 32.15 (a) cl/ieXcjLxeû 'al-malâ'ik-at-i DEF-angels-F-GEN •the angels' 32.17 (b) el.jLvuêv 'al-'insân-u DEF-person-NOM •the person' Since these words break the fairly well-established pattern of using i. to represent/'i/, they seem to be exceptions for some reason. It is plausible that their pronunciation of the glottal stop was less exact than in the other words, and so the glottal stop was not perceived and was not written in these words. This explanation would follow dialectal Arabic pronunciation, which renders CA -I'i as [ayi] or [ay] (as was discussed in Chapter III for Muslim MA) and which does not pronounce hamza following the definite article. It is also possible that there was originally a hook here but that it has faded, as discussed next. 176 There are two words that Violet (1901.11:437) cites in which he says i. represents /i/ in Arabic (symbolized by a short stroke below the consonant it follows). These are listed in (12), with the /i/ underlined. (12) ASP: for CA: 32.5 (a) li-âa®b-i-hl for-people-GEN-his 'for his people' 34.19 (b) /3[. ]au’06v .i.û/i bi-'aw0ân-i-him with-idols-GEN-their (M) 'with their idols' In these words, no /'/ is involved where the symbol i. is used, unlike the situation shown in (lOa-f). Thus, it seems from Violet's discussion that the symbol has taken on an additional usage just in these two words. This seems odd, especially since the vowel /i/ is represented by jl , a, or e. (where its pronunciation had apparently shifted) consistently throughout the rest of the psalm. This deviation from the convention used in the rest of the psalm for representing /'i/ with i. seems to be due to the problem of legibility of the manuscript. Violet (1901.11:437) says that the hooks above the i. symbol are "mostly so indistinct and faded that only light shadows can be seen...." (AG-M) Therefore, it is to be expected that in some places they might appear to exist where they actually never were and vice-versa. In Violet's rendering of the manuscript, these letters in these words look 177 ambiguous between i_ and i.. In fact, Violet even cites both without the hook in a later discussion (p. 438), as does Blau (1966-67;318n.3). Here Blau also points out a disagreement with Kahle (who cites both with hooks), saying that the first should be li rrlYei v.flûi (with an accent) rather than.. .i. (with a hook). Returning to the possibility that the occurrences of the correct case endings in (7a-b and probably c) might be hyper corrections as Blau maintains, it is curious that they occur only before a pronoun suffix and never at the end of a word in this manuscript. If the writer were correcting his Arabic according to the rules of CA, it would be expected that he would have at least occasionally written case endings in the most obvious place they occur in CA— at the ends of words when not in pause. If (7a-b) are hyper-corrections, it is also curious that all the hyper-corrections were corrected correctly and that no incorrect hyper-corrections occur in the psalm fragment. It would be expected that if the writer were using hyper-corrections, this would indicate that he was unsure about the proper grammatical rules and therefore that he would sometimes use the incorrect form that he was hyper- correcting^* (here, case markers). Since the writer of this psalm did not fulfill either of these expectations, it raises the question of whether the instances of case endings before ^This is the usual sense in which the term "hyper- correction" is used. 178 the suffixes are, indeed, hyper-corrections, as Blau maintains. The alternative is that these endings represent the actual usage. Perhaps case ending vowels had not been totally lost yet but were still pronounced— at least sometimes— when not at the end of a word. Such vowels would have been protected by the suffixes after them, making them less susceptible to changes affecting the ends of words than vowels which came at the ends of words were. This is a very common situation for languages. It has occurred, for example, with Lithuanian cases and verbal endings. Additional evidence in support of this hypothesis comes from the 124 examples which Blau (1966-67:318-21) gives of CA case vowels in ASP texts after 'ab 'father' and 'ax 'brother', which were alluded to in connection with (5a-b). As mentioned above, Blau considers these as evidence that case endings had disappeared in ASP because they exhibit vowels which would be the wrong case markers for their positions. Of the 12 examples that he writes out fully (which include 26 instances of 'ab or 'ax), all but the two given in (5a-b) have pronoun suffixes attached. These make it look more plausible than Blau indicates that what had been case vowels in CA continued to be pronounced when occurring before pronoun suffixes (as well as sometimes without the suffixes). The evidence is not unquestionably supportive of this hypothesis, but the possibility that CA case vowels were pronounced in ASP— at 179 least sometimes— would explain the evidence without leaving exceptions that need to be explained as influence from CA in only limited environments. In addition, there is other evidence that there was some awareness of case endings at the time of ASP. This is provided by the examples given in (13a-b) which Blau (1966-67;318n.3) mentions from the Greek/Arabic psalm fragment. In these examples, underlining of a blank space in the ASP words indicates the position where a case vowel would have occurred in CA but did not occur in the ASP, and underlining of a vowel in the ASP words indicates the position where the ASP manuscript agrees with what would have been correct in CA. (13) ASP: for CA; (a) Ai[%]%eiY.P_ùl li-Sa=b-i-hl for-people-GEN-his 'for his people' (b) yaka xuleu i ®ala xalas-i-hl. in salvation-GEN-his 'in his salvation' In (13a-b), no case endings are present, but the vowel of the pronoun suffix has been changed to agree with what the vowel of the genitive case ending would have been in CA. That is, - hu 'he' has become -hi in vowel harmony with the preceding (here, missing) genitive marker -i-, as shown by the underlinings. Blau terms this "remarkable" and attributes it 180 to hypo-correction, meaning that it was a mixture of ASP and CA created by trying to use correct CA forms (here these would be the genitive marker -i-, followed by -hi in vowel harmony with -i-) but falling short of this goal and still retaining part of the ASP forms (here, not using the case marker). Another explanation is that the words in (13a-b) could show the real ASP usage— that the pronoun vowel was pronounced in these words so as to represent the genitive case ending. The end of the expression (which had an -1 which did not drop) could have been reanalyzed as a case ending, so then speakers placed the case ending at the end of such an expression. Or speakers might have still been aware of cases and known that in CA the vowel in the pronoun suffix -hu was changed to -1 when the construction was in the genitive case. When they knew the case of an expression was genitive, then— even though the expression did not have a case ending to mark it— they could have changed the pronoun ending -hu to -hi. It would have been obvious to Arabic speakers from the occurrence of the preposition in these examples that the genitive case was appropriate here, and so they could have easily changed the vowel. In such a situation, the -I in the formerly possessive suffix -hi would have been functioning as a case marker, with a morphological process of vowel-change to derive the -i to mark the case. This suggests, along with the other evidence discussed here, that there was a prepositional case 181 at this time; that is, that -i was now used to mark nouns that occurred after prepositions. This situation also suggests that case marking was preserved longer when elements in the environment made it obvious what the case was. This is supported by the fact that none of the examples cited above which Blau (1966-67:318-21) gives as evidence that the case endings had disappeared in ASP— given here as (5a-b) and (6a-b)— has an overt element (e.g., preposition) immediately preceding it to signal what the case should be. On the other hand, the four examples Blau cites as exceptions to his thesis that case endings had disappeared in ASP— given here as (7a-b) and (13a-b)— were immediately preceded by an overt element (a preposition) which would signal the appropriate case. The 12 examples (which include 26 occurrences) that Blau (1966-67:318-21) gives of 'ab and * ax with the wrong case vowels attached provide more support for the hypotheses that the endings were preserved longer after a preposition and that the ending -i had become a "prepositional" case marker by this time. Six of these directly follow a preposition, as shown in (14a-f). Since these examples are in Arabic script in ASP— like those in (5a-b)— short vowels are not indicated, and so CA 'ab and 'ax are written lb and J_x. However, case endings in these contexts are indicated by long vowels and so are indicated by the script. The prepositions and the case vowels 182 which are attached to the nouns following them are underlined here. (14)(a) bnüwat 'b-ü-nâ ...d'Vat-nâ 'ya-h sonship father-NOM-our...call-our particle-him ' b—Ü—nâ ... w—1— ' b“I_—h father-NOM-our...and-to-father-GEN-his •to be sons of our father...to call him our father...and his father-GEN' (b) m2 'b-â-hmâ with father-ACC-their (DU) 'with their father-ACC' (c) m- 'b-1-hmâ with father-GEN-their (DU) (from a manuscript which exhibits corrections) 'with their father-GEN' (d) b-'x-ü-hâ of-brother-NOM-her 'of her brother-NOM' (e) odam 'x-O-h before brother-NOM-his 'before his brother-NOM' 183 (14)(f) y-tklm -la 'x-ü-h BM.SG.IMPERF-speak against brother-NOM-his 'w y-dln 'x-ü-h and 3M.SG.IMPERF-judge brother-NOM-his •he speaks against his brother-NOM and judges his brother-NOM' Of these six examples in (14a-f), two have the correct genitive marker -I — (14a and c). These are further support for the hypothesis that cases remained longer after a preposition than in other environments. The fact that the other 20 instances which Blau (1966-67:318-21) gives of the wrong case vowel used with 'ab or 'ax do not occur with a preposition makes it all the more curious, if the preposition did not help in their retention, that the only places the correct ending occurs in these examples are those in which the noun directly follows a preposition. The four other examples given here with the wrong case ending (14b and d-f) do not provide support for this hypothesis, but they do not falsify it. They could well show that even in this situation the former case system was breaking down. 4.1.4. Claim D; Single Vowel Case Endings The data show, contrary to Cantineau, and supporting Birkeland and Blau, that loss of single vowel case endings cannot have been due just to loss of final short vowels. The four examples which have dropped the case vowel inside the word before a pronoun suffix— given in (6a-b) and (14a-b), 184 where it would have been protected from loss of word-final vowels, show that there must have been changes internal to the morphemes as well, which were not strictly phonological. These changes could have been either (1) phonetic elision of unstressed vowels— discussed in Section 4.1.1— or (2) generalization from other forms to context position. If the loss was due to generalization, this suggests two possibilities. The generalization could have been either from pausal forms to context forms— as Birkeland and Blau maintained, or from forms whose endings had dropped due to phonetic changes. Speakers would have realized that nouns were spoken without their case vowels when they were in pause position, or in contexts that were not specifiable morphologically if due to phonetic changes. They would have then generalized the same pattern to nouns inside utterances (= "in context"). This would no doubt have been a gradual process, and so one of the last contexts to get the 0 ending on nouns could well have been nouns with attached pronoun suffixes, and particularly nouns directly preceded by prepositions. Furthermore, the data containing 'ab and 'ax also provide evidence about a possible cause and a direction of the loss of case endings. In this data, as Blau (1966-67:318) notes, by far the most prevalent wrong case ending is -ü, which is the nominative marker. This suggests that the nominative form was being generalized as the form for 'ab and 'ax in all 185 positions. This is likely to have been an externally- motivated change due to the fact that there were common religious and cultural phrases that included *ab-ü 'father- NOM '. The frequent use of these phrases would have made the nominative form of 'ab very frequent and therefore the unmarked form for many speakers. For example, in the Arab world, priests are referred to as 'abu-na ('our father'), and fathers are referred to as 'abu X ('X 's father'). The high frequency of 'abu in these contexts would have provided the impetus for 'abu to have been generalized to other contexts where 'ab was used. Then speakers could have extended the common use of the nominative 'abu to the closely related 'ax 'brother', using 'axü in most contexts as well. If this happened, the use of 'abu and 'axü in most contexts would have been contrary to other uses of -u to mark the nominative, -i to mark the genitive, and -a to mark the accusative. In a system with such discrepancies, further change is precipitated in order to resolve the discrepancies. By changing the structure of the system, then, the new, externally-motivated use of -Ü to mark 'father' and 'brother' in all contexts would have contributed to the loss of case endings throughout the whole nominal system. 4.1.5. Claim E; Accusative Case in Singular and Broken Plural Nouns The data support the assertion that the accusative case was the last case lost in singular and broken (irregular) 186 plural nouns^^ (as it was in Ethiopie, another SE Semitic language). The data also suggest that the accusative ending may have gradually been extended optionally to the positions of the other case endings for these types of nouns. Blau (1966-67:323-27) cites numerous examples which show that the accusative marker -an was used randomly in ASP (sometimes it was used and sometimes it was not used in the same context) in positions where it was required in CA— except for adverbs, where it always occurred in ASP. This random use of -an where it was required in CA indicates that there was no apparent reason for its occurrence or nonoccurrence in the positions cited. Blau (1966-67:317) concludes that this is evidence that the cases had already disappeared. However, this data is consistent with the possibility that a limited case system existed at the time of ASP, even though it deviated from that of CA. The fact that in these writings the singular accusative case was used a number of times in place of the CA singular nominative and genitive (except for 'ab and 'ax. as described in Section 4.1.4) suggests that the accusative case marker -an was being optionally extended to all singular indefinite cases. One explanation for this is that -an as a singular ^^These types of nouns are grouped together because they have the same short vowel case endings. The broken plurals take the same endings as the singulars because these plurals are marked in the stem by vowel changes as being plural. Therefore, they do not need the external plural marking that the regular plurals use to indicate their number. 187 indefinite case marker was re-analyzed as the singular indefinite case marker and so was extended to positions where any such markers were used. This could have happened if the other singular case markers had been lost faster than the accusative marker, except in particular contexts where they were overtly marked (as when preceded by a preposition) or protected (as when followed by a pronoun suffix). One reason for the accusative marker -a or -an being retained longer than the other case markers would have been its greater sonority and therefore perceptibility, as a low or mid vowel, than the other vowels, which are high vowels. This explanation is consistent with the theories of Blau and Cantineau that -a was retained longer than -u and -i due to phonetic factors. It is also consistent with Cantineau's and Blau's claim that at one point in spoken Arabic -an was the only case marker left, while the nominative and genitive markers had already been lost. Furthermore, a hypothesis of longer retention and gradual extension of the accusative marker can explain some problems raised by Blau (1966-67:327-43) as he lists numerous examples in which -an occurs in ASP where it is incorrect in CA. First, Blau concludes that almost all of these contexts are due to hyper-correction. However, this analysis is problematic. Blau (1966-67:329; 1981:207-209) notes that while many of the places where -an occurs in ASP contrary to CA are places where it also occurs in Judaeo-Arabic and modern 188 Bedouin Arabic, it does not occur in ASP in a place where it is very common in these later varieties of Arabic— to mark a noun followed by an indefinite attribute. He calls this a "remarkable phenomenon" and attributes it to "lack of hyper corrective features"’* for this construction, in contrast to the occurrence of -an contrary to CA usage in other constructions due to hyper-correction. While possible, Blau's conclusion seems unlikely since if hyper-correction was at work in most of the ASP usages of -an, it is odd that it would never be found in one of them. And actually, the fact that ASP overlaps to a great extent with these other dialects in usage of -an suggests that the ASP usage was a living phenomenon and not due just to hyper-correction. Furthermore, since ASP is a different dialect than both Judaeo-Arabic and modern Bedouin Arabic, there is no reason to expect that all its usages of -an would be identical with theirs. On the other hand, if -an were being generalized in speech to positions formerly occupied by only nominative or genitive markers while a case system still remained— albeit perhaps somewhat marginally, use of -an to indicate that a noun in any position was followed by an indefinite attribute would stand out as being contrary to CA. It could well have been avoided by the ASP writers precisely because they used it in their speech but recognized it as a deviation from the ’*Blau does not state exactly what he means by this phrase. 189 preferred usage. The other usages of -an could have slipped into the writings from speech because they are less easily identifiable as contrary to CA usage since there are similar CA constructions which take the accusative case. In such a scenario, then, all the data are accounted for by the same phenomenon, and none of this needs to be seen as "remarkable." Second, Blau (1966-67:339-43, 1981:210-11) presents the puzzling facts that one 10th century manuscript (Ms. Sinai Ar. 75) often contains -an in all nominal syntactic positions (instead of using nominative or genitive markers where appropriate for CA) while two related 9th century manuscripts (Mss. Sinai Ar. 72 and 74, which Blau 1966-67:30-31 says "belong to the same family", which Ms. Sinai Ar. 75 "is an off-shoot of") exhibit -an in only some positions in which it was not used in CA.’^ However, he is not sure how to account for this situation. On the one hand, he hypothesizes (1981:211) that the use of the accusative case optionally in all positions would have been the more archaic stage, calling it "the oldest stage of the retention of tanwl n [use of -n to mark indefiniteness], after the breakdown of the case system ’^He argues (1965:211) that this usage of -an is not simply the idiosyncracy of one scribe, since it is met with in MS. Vat. ar. 491 and its continuation 645 (written in A.D. 1243) containing the Book of the Demonstration, in more or less the same range of distribution, and these manuscripts cannot be dependent, at least directly, upon MS. Sinai ar. 75 in this particular field, because they contain this -an where it is missing in MS. Sinai ar. 75 and vice versa. 190 of Classical Arabic....” But elsewhere (1966-67:340n.l) he says that this would be "a daring assumption” because it would then be very problematic to explain the fact that two earlier manuscripts have a feature from a later period— usage of -an in only some of the positions in which CA did not use it. Therefore he leaves this situation unresolved. However, the hypothesis proposed here— that the accusative case was gradually extended throughout the nominal system— would explain these facts. If the accusative case marker gradually spread to positions where formerly only the nominative or genitive markers were used, then the occurrence of -an optionally in all syntactic positions in the 10th century manuscript would be seen as the end of a process of the accusative case being generalized and would reflect the situation in which the accusative marker had finally spread to all the positions optionally. The two 9th century manuscripts would reflect an earlier situation in which the accusative marker had not yet spread to all the positions. In such a situation, the problematic ASP manuscript is no longer a problem because its structure logically comes later than the structure of its chronological predecessors. 4.1.6. Claim F; Oblique Case The data suggest that the oblique case may have replaced the nominative case throughout the nominal system (except with 'ab and 'ax. as discussed in Section 4.1.4), not just in dual nouns and masculine sound (regular) plurals as Blau states. 191 Also, contrary to Blau and Cantineau, generalization of the oblique case may have begun before final case vowels were lost. The fact that in ASP the oblique case had replaced the nominative case of CA in dual nouns and in masculine sound plurals is shown by the very frequent use of -ay(n) in the ASP texts where -a(ni) was used in the nominative of CA duals— shown in (15a), from Blau (1966-67:218)— and by the very frequent use of -1 (n) where -ü(na) was used in the nominative of CA masculine sound plurals— shown in (15b), from Blau (1966-67:224). Since, according to Blau (1966-67:218, 224), these usages are so frequent, the conclusion that they reflect spoken Arabic at the time of ASP seems warranted. 192 (15) ASP: for CA: (a) hâ a/avn-1-naby-avn ha a/and. -1 -nabv-ani this/OBL.DU- this/NOM.DU- DEF-proPhet-OBL.DU DEF-prophet-NOM. DU 'these-OBL two •these-NOM two prophets-OBL' prophets-NOM' (b) v-urâ-1-barân-ln y-urâ-1-barân-üna 3M.SG.IMPERF-think- 3M.SG.IMPERF-think- DEF-stranger- DEF-stranger- OBL.M.PL NOM.M.PL •the strangers- 'the strangers- OBL think' NOM think* The hypothesis proposed in Section 4.1.5 that the indefinite accusative marker was generalized throughout the nominal system for singular nouns and broken (irregular) plurals can be combined with Blau's observations just mentioned— that the oblique marker replaced the nominative marker in dual nouns and masculine sound (regular) plurals— to yield the general hypothesis that in ASP the nominative case in nouns was replaced by an oblique case. Such a hypothesis is appealing because it unifies what have formerly been treated as unrelated phenomena, thereby suggesting that ASP speakers treated the whole nominal case system the same way, rather than treating its different components separately (excluding, of course, instances of analogy which were confined to specific lexical items or contexts and in which 193 the forms with the higher frequency of occurrence apparently predominated, such as described in Section 4.1.4 for 'ab and 'ax) . The timing of these changes is not clear from the texts, though. Researchers who have included phonetic factors in the loss of case endings (e.g., Blau and Cantineau) have considered such factors to have played a motivating role at the beginning of the events. This certainly has an appeal. However, the generalization of the oblique markers to nominative contexts in the dual and the masculine sound plural suggests another sequence of changes. Since, as discussed in Chapter II, Section 2.1, all the Semitic languages in their later stages generalized their oblique markers to include the nominative as well, such a diachronic change was internal to the Semitic language family. It can therefore be explained as a "drift" phenomenon to eliminate low-level variations which were present at an earlier stage of Semitic, driven by the putative higher frequency of occurrence of the oblique markers than of the nominative markers (see footnote 3, Chapter II). Therefore, this change in Arabic, attested in the Muslim MA texts and in the ASP texts, is the culmination of the language-internal Semitic change whose seeds were sown centuries earlier. Furthermore, this change was able to occur independently of any loss of final, short case vowels. Therefore, prior dropping of final case vowels was not necessary in order to blur the case system and trigger the 194 changes with the dual and sound plural endings, contrary to Blau and Cantineau. If, then, the language-internal Semitic change of generalizing the oblique endings was the motivation for the loss of the Arabic case distinction formerly made by internal long vowels (-Ona = NOM vs. -Ina = OBL) or long vowels vs. diphthongs (-âni = NOM vs. -ayni = OBL), then the chronology in the loss of Arabic's nominal case endings would place this event as beginning first, followed shortly by the phonetic changes and generalization of pausal forms to context position. In such a scenario— listed in (16)— most of the separate events would have taken place approximately concurrently, and loss of the nominal case distinctions in the dual and the masculine sound plural could have contributed, through analogy, to the loss of case markers at the ends of words, rather than vice versa. In this scenario, the whole nominal system would have moved slowly toward the generalization of oblique markers to all contexts, rather than changing one type of marker first and later changing other types. The timing of these changes may never be known conclusively, but the hypothesis presented here deserves to be considered with the more popular first hypothesis.’® In ’®At the First Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics it was suggested to me by Mohamad Abd-Rabbo that all the changes in case endings from CA to the dialects could be accounted for by the generalization of the oblique (genitive/accusative) markers throughout the system and thus that phonetic changes were not necessary and so were not involved in the process. I disagree with this position on two grounds. 195 addition, further research needs to be done to ascertain more details of the changes so that additional evidence can be brought to bear on the as-yet-unanswered questions. (16) Proposed Chronology for the Loss of the Arabic Case Distinctions (A) Generalization begins of oblique case markers -ayni and -Ina to nominative contexts in duals and masculine sound (regular) plurals. Individual lexical items which occur very frequently in nominative contexts (such as 'ab) generalize the nominative form to all positions, then generalize this ending to closely related forms (such as 'ax). (B) Loss of final, short vowel case markers occurs in singular and broken (irregular) plural nouns due to; First, generalization of the oblique markers does not account for all the changes. Something had to cause the case vowels of nouns to drop before every attached CA pronoun suffix. Of course, as stated in Section 4.1.4, this could have occurred through analogy to pausal forms, which did not have final vowels. However, this raises the second, and perhaps more important, objection. Since there is documentation that phonetic changes did occur, how can we say that they did not contribute to the loss of the case endings (and the mood endings, as well)? Even if only one factor is necessary for causing a change, if several factors are present which could cause the change, how can we decide that only one of them actually played a role, and how can we decide which one it was? The literature on language change often points to multiple causation (cf. Joseph 1982), and I think the most accurate explanation in such a situation is to acknowledge that all the candidate factors played a role in the change— albeit some to a greater or lesser degree— rather than to say that only one was the cause and the rest had no influence at all. 196 (1) Phonetic changes; (2) Generalization of pausal forms to context position; (3) Analogy to duals and masculine sound plurals which are undergoing change A. 4.2.0. Conclusions The following conclusions can be drawn from the ASP data examined in this chapter. (A) Vowels weakened and dropped in ASP. (B) A stress shift may have occurred, because the data is consistent with the claim that one occurred. However, the data does not give enough evidence to show conclusively whether or not one occurred. (C) At the ends of nouns and before pronoun suffixes case endings had only sometimes been dropped. They had sometimes been retained in form here but had ceased to carry out their original case marking function. There is evidence that they may have been retained longer when preceded by a marker which signalled the need for a case ending— such as a preposition. If so, they may have been reanalyzed as prepositional case markers only. In such a situation, they would still have been nominal markers induced by the occurrence of a preceding preposition but would not have been carrying out their former function of marking nominative, genitive, and accusative cases. 197 (D) Contrary to Cantineau, and supporting Birkeland and Blau, loss of single vowel case endings cannot have been due just to loss of final short vowels. The four examples from the Greek/Arabic psalm which have dropped the case vowel inside the word before a pronoun suffix— given in (6a-b) and (13a-b), where it would have been protected from loss of word- final vowels— show that there must have been morpheme-internal changes as well. These changes could have been elision of unstressed vowels— which are discussed with Claim A in Section 4.1.1— or generalization from other forms to context position. (E) The accusative case was the last case lost in the singular and broken (irregular) plural nouns since its presence and absence in its indefinite form -an alternate freely in marking these nouns in syntactic constructions where it is required in CA— except for adverbs, where it occurs regularly regardless of the case required in CA. The data also suggest that the accusative ending may have gradually been optionally extended to the positions of the other case endings since it occurs to mark a number of constructions which call for the nominative or genitive in CA, and in one manuscript its presence and absence alternate freely in all syntactic constructions for these nouns. (F) The oblique case may have replaced the nominative case throughout the nominal system (except in externally- motivated or lexically-conditioned contexts, as mentioned in [G] below), not just in dual nouns and masculine sound 198 (regular) plurals as Blau states. This suggestion is a unification of Blau's claim for dual nouns and masculine sound plurals and the conclusion in Section 4.1.5 for singular and broken plural nouns, suggesting that the entire nominal case system was treated the same way rather than its different parts being treated differently. An explanation for why the entire Arabic case system generalized the oblique markers is that this was an internally-motivated change, the realization in Arabic of a diachronic change precipitated in all the Semitic languages by putative low-level variations in the Proto-Semitic case system. It is proposed that such variations lead all the Semitic daughter languages to regularize their case systems by generalizing their oblique endings to include the nominative as well. The direction of this change may have been due to higher frequency of occurrence of the oblique markers than of the nominative markers. Generalization of the oblique case in Arabic may have begun before final case vowels were lost, contrary to Blau and Cantineau. (G) In addition, the nominative case replaced the oblique case in 'ab ('father') because it was used frequently in nominative contexts. This externally-motivated change was then generalized to the closely related word 'ax ('brother'), resulting in two very frequently used words whose case vowels did not correspond with other uses of case vowels in the language. By altering the structure of the case system in 199 this way, the externally-motivated new use of -ü to mark 'ab and 'ax in all contexts may have contributed to the loss of case endings throughout the whole nominal system. CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS 5.0. Introduction The research reported here has examined the questions of when and how case endings were lost in Arabic between Old Arabic and the modern sedentary Arabic dialects. It was argued in Chapter I that previous answers to these questions are not fully satisfactory and, therefore, that further research on the details of the loss is needed to help illuminate the actual events in the loss. It was further argued in Chapter I that additional research on this topic would also add to our understanding of two issues in historical linguistics: (1) the typological issue of the direction of leveling and loss of morphological forms, and (2) the methodological issue of how much weight to place on language-internal and language-external evidence in research on language change. To address these issues, this dissertation examined an aspect of the loss of Arabic's case endings which has received little or no attention in the literature on this topic— the extent and role of the occurrence of fewer than the usual three case distinctions in pre- and early Islamic times. This 200 201 dissertation first examined the evidence available which sheds light on early developments pertaining to Arabic's cases. It began with a review of case usage in other Semitic languages and as reconstructed for Semito-Hamitic and Proto-Semitic (Chapter II, Section 2.1). It continued by looking at relevant work that has been done on pre-and early Islamic writings: pre-classical Arabic inscriptions and graffiti (Section 2.2.1); pre- and early Islamic poetry (Section 2.2.2); the Qur'an (Section 2.2.3); and medieval grammarians' reports of pre-conquest dialects, the Prophet Muhammad's speech, and non-standard Arabic in the Qur'an (Section 2.3.1) . Finally, the examination reported here continued through the time of the Islamic conquests by evaluating in detail published versions of Muslim and Christian Middle Arabic (MA) texts composed during and immediately after the conquests (Chapters III and IV, respectively). Evidence from these MA documents that has been cited previously as showing that there was no case system in spoken Arabic at this time was examined in detail to ascertain (1) whether there was, indeed, a system of case usage at this time, (2) if so, what it was, and (3) what changes had taken place from the CA case system. This dissertation has, therefore, reviewed numerous types of information that shed light on the way case usage in Arabic developed before and through the time of the Islamic conquests (the time that the case system is often said to have no longer been in use in spoken Arabic). One contribution of this 202 research is that it extends farther back in time than most research on developments in Arabic's case system, since accounts of these developments generally make use of materials only as far back as the pre-classical Arabic inscriptions. For example, I have not seen any research directly addressing this topic which has evaluated how pre- and early Islamic Arabic could have developed out of proto-Semitic and thus whether seeds of the loss of Arabic's case endings could have been present in its ancestor language. Therefore, one question the approach in this dissertation addresses is whether events prior to those generally mentioned as relevant to the loss of Arabic's case endings have a bearing on it.^ Another contribution of this research is that it also examines in detail the evidence at the other end of the time period in question— writings in early Islamic times— to explore whether there are indications that any system of case usage was still present in spoken Arabic or whether, as has been stated previously, case marking was no longer used in this register of Arabic. Furthermore, this research examines some of the evidence in more detail than previous research has, to ’The research presented here does not, however, explore in detail data from modern Arabic dialects to ascertain types of changes that Arabic could have been going through in early Islamic times. While other researchers have taken this approach (cf. especially Blau 1966-67, 1981; Hopkins 1984; Versteegh 1984), I have not, following Carter's (1986:133) observation— with respect to Versteegh's (1984) hypothesis— that such modern evidence "remains vulnerable to the objection that examples from contemporary Arabic are not necessarily applicable to seventh century Arabic." 203 ascertain whether it can reveal additional information about the loss of Arabic's case endings. Conclusions reached from this research are discussed below. 5.1. Timing of Events in the Loss of Arabic Case Endings I observed in Miller (1986b:47) that "[t]he exact origin of the modern Arabic sedentary dialects spoken outside the Arabian Peninsula will probably never be known, since no direct records of Arabic speech at the time of their inception are known to exist (Blau 1961:228; Fuck 1955:8; Rabin 1951:2)." The lack of early records of Arabic speech means that we are in the same situation for trying to determine when and how the Arabic case endings were lost. For this reason, we will probably never be able to determine precisely what the exact events and their timing in this loss were. Carter (1986:133) has stated this emphatically, saying "the catastrophic fact [is (AG-M)] that what we know (a) about the language of the Arabs before Islam and (b) about the colloquials in the period immediately following the conquests cannot furnish enough evidence to prove anv theory beyond doubt. ..." Therefore, the best we can do is continue to seek more details about the Arabic language in its earliest times, and see what conclusions they point to. This dissertation has suggested that there is evidence which can shed light on this issue from earlier times than has generally been included in accounts of the loss of Arabic's case endings. This information is the evidence available 204 about what has happened to case markers in the Semitic languages (reviewed in Chapter II, Section 2.1). 5.1.1. Relevant Evidence from Semitic The evidence available for Semito-Hamitic shows that while this reconstructed ancestor of Arabic had a number of different case marker suffixes for singular nouns, in the dual and plural, it differentiated only two cases— nominative and oblique, thus grouping together the genitive and accusative for non-singular forms. The evidence further shows that there were several different kinds of plural markers. According to Diakonoff (1965:63-66), these included the three types of suffixes listed in Table 2, as well as the very productive and common "broken" (=stem changing) plural to which the singular case markers were suffixed, and the archaic stem reduplication. This degree of variability in Semitio-Hamitic was reduced in all the Semitic daughter languages, as shown in Table 3. This table shows that all the Semitic languages for which evidence is available for more than several centuries both generalized their dual and plural oblique endings and lost their singular case endings. This same diachronic change throughout all of Semitic is the type of evidence needed to hypothesize that the loss of cases was a drift phenomenon in Semitic. Since all the branches of Semitic lost all their case endings over time, this suggests that the daughter languages all inherited from Semitic some sort of variation in 205 the case system which they could not tolerate over a long period of time. They had to eliminate the variation, and so they gradually reduced the number of cases which they had inherited from Semitic. Regarding the dual, of the major Semitic languages, only Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Classical Arabic retained the nominative/oblique distinction. Even among these languages, though, those which had later stages also replaced this distinction with one form for all dual nouns. Akkadian gave way to Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian which both generalized the oblique form of the dual, as did the modern Arabic dialects (the most recent representative cited of SE Semitic), as shown in Table 1 (Section 1.1). Practically the same changes from Semito-Hamitic also occurred in the plural for all these languages. The only major difference from how they treated the dual distinction is that both Syriac and Ethiopie retained a plural marker rather than losing it as they had the dual marker. They both made changes in the plural, though, from Semito-Hamitic, generalizing the oblique form to include the nominative, as the other Semitic languages did. Since all these related languages— except Ugaritic, which is attested for only the 13th and 14th centuries, B.C.— got rid of the Semito-Hamitic dual and plural case distinctions, this suggests that something was already in the parent language which precipitated the same type of change in all the 206 daughter languages. The likely candidate is the variability in the Semito-Hamitic plural endings. Since languages do not tolerate forever a large number of forms for the same function— especially for plural marking, it was very likely that the Semitic daughter languages would get rid of this degree of variability. Furthermore, since these languages in all but one instance generalized the oblique form to include the nominative form, there must have also been a phenomenon in Semitic to predispose all the daughter languages to generalize in the same direction. The fact that everything except nominative was grouped together with the oblique case in the Semito-Hamitic duals and plurals means that the oblique marker probably had a higher frequency of occurrence than the nominative marker did. This would be so because even though all sentences have subjects— marked by the nominative case, all sentences do not have objects— marked by the oblique case. Therefore it could very well have been true in Semitic that there were still more instances of oblique markers than of nominative markers because the Semitic languages often indicate pronouns with suffixes attached to the verb. Thus, many subjects of sentences are indicated by suffixed pronouns rather than by separate nouns with case markers attached. If it is, in fact, true that the oblique case occurs more frequently than the nominative case in Semitic, then the Semitic daughter languages generalized the marker that 207 occurred the most frequently. In this situation frequency would thus have predominated over other characteristics of markedness to guide the diachronic change. Regarding the singular case endings, the languages which preserved the Hamito-Semitic dual and plural distinctions— Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Classical Arabic— also preserved the three case singular distinction usually reconstructed for Semitic. Furthermore, as with the dual and plural, the two of these three languages for which evidence is available for more than a number of centuries (Akkadian as Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian, and the modern Arabic dialects) also broke down the Semitic singular case system, as did the other Semitic languages. Also, while Ugaritic retained the singular case endings in the later half of the 2nd millennium B.C., Hebrew had lost these case endings by the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C. This illustrates clearly the tendency for language-internal case loss in Semitic by showing it here in sister languages in the same branch of Semitic. All this evidence shows that loss of the singular cases was a language- internal trend in the Semitic languages. Furthermore, it has been documented that two of the Semitic languages— Akkadian and Ethiopie— collapsed two of the singular cases into one, creating diptotic distinctions as the singular case system was breaking down. It is interesting that this type of change— generalization of one category to include a formerly separate one— is the type of change that 208 occurred in all the Semitic languages in the dual and plural categories as those case distinctions were lost. This suggests that Proto-Semitic could also have had some variation in the singular case system, as it seems to have had in the dual and plural systems, and that the various Semitic languages generalized the old singular case variations in different ways as they were losing their case systems as a whole. Word counts for other Semitic languages such as Woodington (1982) did for Neo-Babylonian would provide valuable information for evaluating this hypothesis. Additional investigations of other hypotheses are, of course, needed as well. Therefore, the Semitic situation shows that the seeds of Arabic's loss of case endings were present in Semitic and Semito-Hamitic times. This seems to be especially true for the generalization of the oblique dual and plural markers, and it may be true for the loss of the singular markers. This evidence suggests that generalization of the dual and plural oblique markers and, possibly, generalization of singular markers were some of the first events to start Arabic on its way to the loss of case distinctions— rather than phonetic factors or language contact which, as described in Section 1.2, have been proposed previously as the original events. 5.1.2. Relevant Written Evidence from Arabic In addition to suggesting that evidence from developments of the noun in the Semitic languages provides insights into 209 early changes relevant to Arabic's loss of case endings (outlined above in Section 5.1), the results of the research presented here also concur with previous researchers that several types of written evidence are also relevant to this topic. The conclusions reached here are listed below for each type of evidence. As discussed in Section 2.2.1, pre-classical Arabic inscriptions and graffiti indicate that cases fell out of use in some Arabic dialects (e.g., Nabataean) north of the Arabian Peninsula in pre-Islamic times. This loss indicates that the case system was unstable in at least these forms of Arabic in pre-Islamic times. It also suggests that other forms of Arabic might also have been unstable and might have also been in the process of losing case endings at this time. However, this evidence tells us nothing more for sure about the situation of the Arabic in the Arabian Peninsula at this time. The discussion in Section 2.2.2 of pre-and early Islamic poetry concludes that this evidence, on the other hand, is directly relevant to helping determine what was occurring with case endings in peninsular Arabic at this time, since this poetry was composed by Arabs living in the Arabian Peninsula. This evidence is problematic because it is probably a mixture of current and older forms of Arabic, as well as forms molded to fit the rhyme and meter of poetry. However, this analysis concludes that the occurrence of case endings in this poetry indicates, at the least, that cases were still meaningful to 210 the Arabs of this time. Therefore, this evidence suggests that case usage had not disappeared form peninsular Arabic before the Islamic conquests. The discussion in Section 2.2.3 of the language of the Qur'an also suggests that case endings had not been completely lost in the Arabian Peninsula before the time that the Qur'an was revealed to Muhammad. This conclusion is reached because deviations from standard grammar in the text indicate that the consonantal skeleton has never been revised and because this skeleton is written with the (few) conventions used for indicating case vowels. The research presented in Section 2.3.1 concludes that, in addition to the pre- and early Islamic texts written by Arabs, the writings of the medieval grammarians about Arabic can, when evaluated carefully, provide more detailed insights into pre-and early Islamic usage of case vowels. The detailed examination presented here of some of this evidence concludes that the evidence from these reports suggests that (l) the Hijlzi dialect had some vowel harmony, (2) one explanation for occurrences examined of u in Hijazi noun stems is that they developed in vowel harmony with the nominative case vowel -u, and (3) an explanation for occurrences examined here of waw ( [Ü] ) in some nouns is that these also developed in vowel harmony with the nominative case vowel -u. These explanations provide a unified reason for all these phenomena and, furthermore, suggest that case vowels had not been lost by 211 this time in gi]âzi Arabic even though there is evidence that they had been lost in eastern Arabic dialects by this time. Finally, the written evidence of the Middle Arabic writings (examined in Chapters III and IV) suggests additional details about usage of case endings at the time of the Arab conquests. Both Muslim and Christian MA exhibit some instances of what are arguably case vowels. This evidence has been interpreted previously as so limited that it indicates that case vowels were no longer used in colloquial Arabic at this time. These occurrences have been characterized as insignificant deviations from the general lack of usage of case vowels, as well as sometimes as hyper- and hypo- correct ions. It is argued here, however, that these occurrences show that case usage had not, in fact, disappeared in all contexts. Analysis of these instances reveals that they appear in limited, recurring environments. This indicates that a case system was still in use, although in a more limited way than it had been in CA. Both the Muslim and the Christian MA texts suggest that case usage continued optionally at this time before pronoun suffixes and after prepositions. Examination of the occurrences of vowels in the Muslim MA papyri and in the Greek-Arabic psalm fragment— discussed in Chapter IV, as well as long vowels in other ASP texts, reveals that they were sometimes used in these specific, limited environments, where 212 their placement suggests their purpose could have been to signal case. For example, the data show some appropriate vowels in case marking position at the ends of nouns and before pronoun suffixes. This suggests that case endings had not always been dropped in these positions. The data also show some "incorrect" vowels (according to CA usage) in case position. This suggests that the form of a case vowel had sometimes been retained in these positions but no longer marked the particular case it did in CA. It is therefore argued that this is one environment in which case vowels were preserved optionally longer than elsewhere. This can be explained by the fact that case vowels were "protected" by the suffix from being dropped. This phenomenon is an internally motivated one, due to language change factors in Arabic and not due to external factors such as language contact, as shown by the preservation in the modern dialects of morphological features when followed by pronoun suffixes. For example, as outlined in Chapter I, Section 1.1, the modern Arabic dialects pronounce the -t of the feminine singular marker /-at/ only before pronoun suffixes and nouns which are in a possessive relationship to the previous noun. Also, as mentioned, in Chapter II, Section 2.3.4, Egyptian Arabic preserves the genitive and accusative case vowels before the 3M.SG and 3F.SG suffix -k. Therefore, the optional use of case vowels before pronoun suffixes seen in the MA texts is not only evidence 213 that case vowels were still available for use in Middle Arabic. It is also some of the earliest evidence we have that Arabic was undergoing, in early Islamic times, the historical change of preserving morphological features before pronoun suffixes. In addition, there is also evidence that appropriate case vowels (according to CA usage) may have been retained longer when directly preceded by a marker— such as a preposition— which signalled that a case ending would be appropriate. In ASP, there is, furthermore, evidence of the vowel in the pronoun -hu being changed to -hi when preceded by a preposition but not by a case vowel in the noun (which was the triggering environment for the -hu > -hi change in CA). An explanation for this phenomenon is that the former genitive case vowel -i had been reinterpreted as a prepositional marker and that there was a morphological "vowel change" process which supplied the -i to mark a prepositional case. A hypothesis is therefore proposed that there was both a prepositional case and a "prepositional case vowel change" morphological process at this time in ASP. There was also, possibly, a prepositional case in Muslim MA at this time (subject to further investigation of the frequency of vowel occurrences following prepositions in these texts). In addition, the evidence examined here from the Muslim MA papyri show that the "correct" (according to rules of CA usage) nominative marker is sometimes used for duals (-an) and 214 masculine plurals (-On) instead of the more prevalent oblique markers (-ayn and -In) being used everywhere. One explanation of this phenomenon is that the more differentiated "standard" CA system of two case markers for each of these numbers was still in use optionally. Further research would allow us to determine whether there were limited, specified environments where this occurred, as there were for the other phenomena examined in this chapter. Furthermore, the ASP evidence evaluated in Section 4.1.5 suggests that in ASP the indefinite accusative marker was generalized throughout the nominal system for singular nouns and broken (irregular) plurals. This is then combined with Blau's observations that in ASP the oblique marker replaced the nominative marker in dual nouns and masculine sound (regular) plurals— to yield the general hypothesis that in ASP the nominative case in nouns was replaced by an oblique case. Such a hypothesis is appealing because it unifies what have formerly been treated as unrelated phenomena, thereby suggesting that ASP speakers treated the whole nominal case system the same way, rather than treating its different components separately (excluding, of course, instances of analogy which were confined to specific lexical items or contexts and in which the forms with the higher frequency of occurrence apparently predominated, such as described in Section 4.1.4 for 'ab and Jax). 215 Finally, it is proposed in Section 4.1.4 that the nominative case replaced the oblique case in 'ab ('father') because it was used frequently in nominative contexts. This externally-motivated change was then generalized to the closely related word 'ax ('brother'), resulting in two very frequently used words whose case vowels did not correspond with other uses of case vowels in the language. By altering the structure of the case system in this way, the externally- motivated new use of -û to mark 'ab and 'ax in all contexts may have contributed to the loss of case endings throughout the whole nominal system. Although the timing of these changes is not clear from the texts, the generalization of the oblique markers to nominative contexts in the dual and the masculine sound plural suggests a sequence of changes that differs from previous proposals which hypothesize that phonetic factors played a motivating role at the beginning of Arabic ' s loss of case endings. Since all the Semitic languages in their later stages generalized their oblique markers to include the nominative as well, such a diachronic change was internal to the Semitic language family. It can therefore be explained as a "drift" phenomenon to eliminate low-level variations which were present at an earlier stage of Semitic, driven by the putative higher frequency of occurrence of the oblique markers than of the nominative markers. Therefore, this change in Arabic, attested in the Muslim MA texts and in the ASP texts. 216 is the culmination of the language-internal Semitic change whose seeds were sown centuries earlier. Furthermore, this change was able to occur independently of any loss of final, short case vowels. Therefore, prior dropping of final case vowels was not necessary in order to blur the case system and trigger the changes with the dual and sound plural endings, contrary to previous proposals. If, then, the language-internal Semitic change of generalizing the oblique endings was the motivation for the loss of the Arabic case distinction formerly made by internal long vowels (-Ona = NOM vs. -Ina = OBL) or long vowels vs. diphthongs (-âni = NOM vs. -ayni = OBL), the chronology in the loss of Arabic's nominal case endings would place this event as beginning first, followed shortly by the phonetic changes, generalization of pausal forms to context position, generalization of the nominative case for 'ab and 'ax. and, finally, retention of short case vowels in "protected" environments before pronoun suffixes and following prepositions. At this time, the ending -i would have been reanalyzed as a prepositional case marker, and the morphological process of "prepositional vowel change" would have begun. In such a scenario— listed in (16) in Chapter IV- -most of the separate events would have taken place approximately concurrently, and loss of the nominal case distinctions in the dual and the masculine sound plural could have contributed, through analogy, to the loss of case markers 217 at the ends of words, rather than vice versa. In this scenario, the whole nominal system would have moved slowly toward the generalization of oblique markers to all contexts, rather than changing one type of marker first and later changing other types. The timing of these changes may never be known conclusively, but the scenario of changes proposed here is a legitimate proposal that deserves to be considered along with previous proposals. In addition, further research needs to be done to ascertain more details of the changes so that additional evidence can be brought to bear on the as-yet- unanswered questions. 5.2. Summary The evidence presented here as a whole, therefore, suggests both that (1) case loss in Arabic began earlier than has been discussed previously (with its first impetus occurring in Semitic times), and (2) case usage remained as an option later than has been accepted previously (during and immediately after the Islamic conquests). This is a long time period for such a loss, but morphological loss sometimes moves slowly. For example, a similar long situation of morphological change has been documented by Joseph (1983, Chapter III) for the Greek infinitive. Joseph argues that the beginnings of this loss appeared in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C., with possible contributing factors apparent even earlier, and that the loss was not completed until the 1500's A.D. For Arabic, it is argued in this dissertation that the 218 seeds of the loss were sown in Semito-Hamitic and Proto- Semitic by the 2nd millennium B.C. and that the loss was not completed until after the 10th century A.D. 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