Journal of Language Contact 6 (2013) 220–242 brill.com/jlc
Arabia and Areal Hybridity
Ahmad Al-Jallad Leiden University Centre for Linguistics/Leiden University Institute for Area Studies [email protected]
Abstract The present contribution proposes the existence of two ‘micro linguistic areas’ in Arabia in which features from Arabic and other Semitic languages diffused multilaterally. Some of the output varieties pose a significant challenge to phylogeny as they exhibit conflicting isoglosses connect- ing them equally with different lineages of Semitic. We introduce to the term ‘areal hybridity’ to explain the genetic position of languages emerging from contact situations such as these. We argue that several older varieties, such as the dialect of Ṭayyiʾ and the medieval Ḥimyaritic lan- guage described by the Arab grammarians, as well some modern varieties of southwest Arabia, such as Rāziḥī and Rigāľ Almaʿ, fall into this category.
Keywords areal linguistics; hybridization; dialect mixing; Arabic; Ancient North Arabian; Ancient South Arabian
1. Introduction
Until the 1970s, Semiticists classified Arabic in a subgrouping called South Semitic, which also included MSA, ASA, and the Ethio-Semitic languages. Several linguistic features attested in the aforementioned languages gave the impression that they shared an intermediate linguistic ancestor that excluded
* The author thanks aartenM Kossmann, Na’ama Pat-El, and the anonymous referees of this article for their helpful feedback and improvements. The author alone is responsible for all errors. Abbreviations of languages: ANA = Ancient North Arabian; ASA = Ancient South Arabian; MSA = Modern South Arabian; QCT = Qur’ānic Consonantal Text. Gram matical abbreviations: 1 = first person; 2= second person; 3 = third person; cs = common singular; ms = masculine singular; fs = feminine singular; pro = pronoun; acc = accusative; voc = vocative.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI 10.1163/19552629-00602002
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Northwest Semitic and East Semitic.1 Similarities between languages can arise for a number of reasons and not all are indicative of genetic relationships. Heztron (1974; 1975; 1976) argued convincingly that only shared morpho- logical innovations constituted positive evidence for the purposes of genetic subgrouping. After careful scrutiny, Hetzron and others determined that the features characterizing South Semitic were either retentions from Proto- Semitic or could be explained through parallel development and/or diffusion.2 As a result, South Semitic as a genetic subgrouping was largely abandoned. Nevertheless, the features shared by its former members do seem to suggest the existence of a southern linguistic area,3 where contact-based similarities cut across genetic boundaries. The small corner of West Asia occupied by the Semitic languages naturally gave rise to several overlapping linguistic areas and micro-areas. Prolonged contact within such areas can eventually obliterate all evidence of earlier genetic relationships, as it becomes impossible to distinguish between inherited and diffused innovations, especially in the case of closely related subgroupings of a single language family.4 Typological research on borrow- ing has shown that no feature is immune to diffusion, and that structural
1 These include the p* > f sound change, the broken plurals, especially, in the view of Ratcliffe (1998), specific plural patterns, the-k based morphemes of the 1st and 2nd persons of the suffix conjugation, and the L-stem of the verb. 2 Hetzron’s original model placed Arabic in a subgrouping with Canaanite and Aramaic called Central Semitic, resulting in a smaller South Semitic, comprising MSA, ASA, and Ethio- Semitic. Since then, Nebes (1994) showed that ASA also participated in an important Central Semitic innovation, the imperfect based on the prefix conjugation*yaqtulu, and Porkhomovsky (1997) pointed out that the genetic relationship between the remaining two members, MSA and Ethio-Semitic, was based on a shared retention, the old imperfect yaqattal, rather than innova- tion, resulting in the elimination of the subgrouping. See Huehnergard and Rubin (2011) for a critique of Hetzron’s model and an up-to-date discussion on the classification of Semitic. 3 Aikhenvald explains a linguistic area as “a geographically delimited region including languages from at least two language families, or different subgroups of the same family, sharing traits, or com- binations thereof, most of which are not found in languages from these families or subgroups spoken outside the area…” (Aikhenvald, 2007: 11). Campbell (2006) provides a thorough critique of ‘linguistic area’ as an explanatory concept, highlighting the fact that there is no consensus as to what exactly constitutes a linguistic area, and that nothing seems to distinguish areal borrowing from regular borrowing. Campbell’s arguments notwithstanding, the term ‘linguistic area’ does seem useful, at the very least, to describe a phenomenon of multi-lateral borrowing among geo- graphically proximal languages, as opposed to ‘vertical’ borrowing, as in the influence of Latin on the modern European languages or Classical Arabic on the modern Arabic dialects and other Islamicate languages. 4 This is especially the case in situations of linguistic equilibrium, where no dominant lan- guage is present. See Aikhenvald (2007: 7ff.) for further discussion of this issue.
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SAUDI Riğāl Alma' ARABIA
Jabal Rāzih
Amiritic
Haram Y EMEN ̜̜ S an ā
Z afār Şa y h a d . HADRAMAWT.
Figure 1. Southwest Arabia.
5 On this point, see the discussion in Aikhenvald (2007) and the bibliographies there. 6 For the distribution of this phenomenon, see Behnstedt (1985, map 68). It seems highly unlikely that Proto-Arabic retained the Proto-Semitic asymmetrical paradigm, 1cs *-ku, 2ms *-ta, 2fs *-ti, as all other dialects of Arabic outside of this region exhibit the leveling of the t onset rather than the k. In so far as one can tell from the ANA epigraphy, those languages seem to have also leveled the t endings to the first person, e.g. Thamudic B: h Rḍw b-k ʾn rf ʾ-t voc. Rḍw in-pro.2s pro.1cs healed-1cs ‘O Rḍw, by you I am healed’ (Hayajneh, 2011: 770).
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Dūma
Nafūd
T a y y i ̜
T ̜ h Taymā Hāʾil a Hegrā m H I J Ā u Z Dadān d i c
NAJD Yathrib
Figure 2. North Arabia.
Table 1 Suffix conjugation in Sabaic and Yemeni Arabic varieties.7
Sabaic Ǧiblah Yarīm Proto-Arabic 1cs f ʿl-k katub-k katab-t *katab-tu 2ms f ʿl-k katab-k katab-t *katab-ta 2fs f ʿl-k katab-ki katab-ti *katab-ti identical to its ASA counterpart, differing only in that the onset of the pro- nominal morphemes was t as opposed to k. The diffusion of inflectional morphology is not limited to exchanges in the expression of a shared morphological category. Entire morphological catego- ries, present in one language but absent in the other, can be borrowed as
7 See Fischer and Jastrow (1980: 117) for more on these forms and dialects.
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8 This change has affected most, but not all, of theinai S dialects. On these dialects, see de Jong (2000). 9 Huehnergard (2005: 184-186). 10 While Central Semitic is certainly a genetic entity, many of its languages share features that spread areally following the diversification of Proto-Central Semitic, and which cannot be recon- structed for the proto-language. On the areal features of Central Semitic, see Huehnergard (2005). Within Central Semitic, several smaller contact points can be identified. One may, for example, speak of an early Aramaeo-Arabian (both consisting of multiple languages/dialects) micro-area in the old Nabataean realm. The Aramaic used by the Nabataeans is clearly influenced by Arabic and, conversely, the Arabic of the Petra Papyri appears to have been significantly influenced by Aramaic; on this, see Al-Jallad et al. (2013). For Aramaic-Arabic contact, see Weninger (2011).
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2. Southwest Arabia
The linguistic record of ASA begins in the early first millennium BCE and continues to the 6th century CE.13 Over this period, a single language family, ASA, comprising four varieties, Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabanic, and Ḥaḍramitic,14 is attested in both monumental inscriptions and on wooden sticks and palm- leaf stalks, in what is called the minuscule script.15 Sabaic is by far the longest
11 The term has been used to describe ypriotC Arabic on account of the presence of features from both Levantine and the Qəltu (northern Mesopotamian) dialect groups. The application of this term to Cypriot Arabic, however, is erroneous, as the similarities this dialect shares with both of the aforementioned groups probably reflects an earlier stage where the dialects of the Levant were more similar to the Qəltu dialects, rather than a recent contact situation between the two groups as they are known today. On the genetic and areal affiliations of Cypriot Arabic, see Borg (1985: 150-159). 12 In Michif, for example, nouns and adjectives are largely drawn from French while polysyn- thetic verbs derive from Cree. 13 Although cf. note 16. 14 A fifth possible language is attested in the hofarD dipinti inscriptions, although these still await decipherment. On their tentative classification as ASA, see Macdonald (2000: 32). 15 The second medium wasused for personal and practical purposes. On the evolution of the so-called minuscule script, see Ryckmans (2001); for the inscriptions, see Stein (2010).
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Table 2 The article in Sabaic.17
Indeterminate Determinate Singular ṣlm-m ṣlm-n Dual ṣlm-n ṣlm-n-hn Plural ṣlm-n ṣlm-n-hn
Putting aside the controversial case of Ḥaḍramitic,18 the other three ASA languages do not appear to share a special relationship, either areal or genetic, with the MSA languages, and none can be understood as ancestral to these languages.
2.1. The ormationF of a Linguistic Area
Beginning in the first century BCE, the appearance of the ethnonym ʾʿrb in the ASA inscriptions becomes more frequent. Scholars have traditionally
16 The latest inscription in the outhS Arabian alphabet is a bilingual Arabic-South Arabian graffito from Naǧrān dated to the 9th century CE on paleographical grounds. The South Arabian portion consists only of the personal name Twq bn ʾlhyṯm; see al-Saad (2004). On the chronol- ogy of Sabaic, see Stein (2011: 1046-1047). 17 Adapted from (Stein 2011: 1051). 18 It has been suggested that Ḥaḍramitic, the most poorly attested of the ASA languages, could be ancestral to the MSA languages based on a few shared features, such as the shape of the 3rd person pronouns and the preposition ha-. These are likely the result of language contact rather than genetic inheritance, as Ḥaḍramitic still exhibits several important ASA features, such as the postpositive article and the preposition bn “from”; see Rubin (2008: 87-88).
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West Semitic
Central Semitic
Arabic ASA Northwest Semitic MSAEthio-Semitic
Figure 3. Classification of West Semitic.19 understood the term to mean ‘nomad’ on the basis of Classical Arabic ʾaʿrāb, although there is little internal evidence to substantiate this connection.20 But even if this sense is maintained, it would not necessitate that these nomads spoke a non-ASA language; no text in a non-ASA language directly associated with the ʾʿrb has been discovered.21 Nevertheless, it is perhaps significant that Sabaic inscriptions of a mixed character begin to appear during this period in the Haram region, north of the Yemeni Jawf. Several inscriptions from this provenance exhibit phonological and morphological features that are not typi- cal of earlier forms of Sabaic, or contemporary Sabaic from other regions, such as the preposition mn ‘from’ instead of Sabaic bn, a conjunction hn, the nega- tive preterite construction consisting of lm and the prefix conjugation, and several phonological irregularities.22
19 I have excluded ANA from this classification since its genetic unity has not yet been dem- onstrated. To quote a footnote in Al-Jallad (forthcoming b): “Ancient North Arabian refers first and foremost to the northern varieties of the South Semitic script. As a language family, the term can only be considered a working hypothesis. There are great differences between these languages, and to date no shared innovations linking the members of this category have been identified. The original basis of this classification was the shape of the definite article, h-, but this feature is obviously no grounds for the establishment of a new branch of Central Semitic. Much more research on the lan- guages written in these scripts is required in order to understand their interrelationships and their connection with other Semitic languages.” 20 For a historical outline of the ʾʿrb in South Arabia and a comprehensive discussion of the term in the inscriptions, see Retsö (2003: 536-574.); see Hoyland (2001: 48ff.) for a short sum- mary of the ʾʿrb in the broader context of the history of South Arabia. 21 It is not justifiable to assume that the nomads of the ancient Near East were speakers of Arabic simply on the basis of their lifestyle. The non-Arabic ANA inscriptions were largely pro- duced by nomads; on these languages, see Macdonald (2004). While Macdonald (2009: 307ff.) argues convincingly that the Arabic language was correctly associated with some of the various peoples called “Arabs” in antiquity, it is also important to remember that many who were given this label were not speakers of Arabic, such as the inhabitants of ancient Yemen. 22 These includethe pervasive assimilation of *n to a following consonant, *t > ś, and *ś > s; see Stein (2004: 228-229). While these features certainly separate these texts from other forms
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These divergences from standard Sabaic prompted C. Robin to characterize their language as an artificial idiom, which he termed “pseudo-sabéen”, used for inter-tribal communication and the composition of important texts (1992: 97).23 In addition to the difficulty of trying to find a reasonable histori- cal context for a Sabaic koinè among speakers of North Arabian varieties, Macdonald (2000: 56) pointed out that the language of these inscriptions still exhibited several important Sabaic features, such as the postpositive definite article, -(h)n and the causative h-f ʿl, instead of North Arabian ʾ-f ʿl. Judging the North Arabian influence to be too insignificant, Macdonald suggested that these texts were simply “clumsy attempts at writing correct Sabaic by people whose mother tongue was either a different language, or a dialect of Sabaic which contained elements from another language” (ibid.: 57). Stein (2004) also took the mixed inscriptions from the Haram region as representatives of a dialect heavily influenced by North Arabian, namely, one spoken by the tribe of ʾAmīr, and hence termed ʾAmīritic.24 While Robin’s pseudo-Sabaic seems unlikely, what exactly would it mean to call the ʾAmīritic dialect a type of Sabaic heavily influenced by North Arabian? Had speakers of a North Arabian language recently given up their mother tongue for Sabaic, or does it indicate that migrations from the north into Sabaic territory gave rise to a significant North Arabian substratum? Whatever the case, one cannot help but feel that the mixed idiom of the ʾAmīritic inscriptions foreshadows the statements of the medieval Arab poly- math al-Hamdānī (893-945 CE) on the relationship between Arabic and Ḥimyaritic.25 In his book The Description of the Arabian Peninsula (ṣifatu ǧazīrati l-ʿarab; 2001), al-Hamdānī devoted a short section to the languages
of Sabaic, Arabic cannot always be considered the source. Indeed, some features, such as the hn conjunction (cf. §3 below) and the aforementioned sound changes, are not typical of Arabic at all. 23 See also Robin (1996: 1271ff.). In Robin (1992: 97), the Haram inscriptions are grouped with two inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw under the rubric “pseudo-sabéen qaḥṭānite.” See Macdonald (2000: 61) for a list of the inscriptions belonging to this corpus. 24 See Robin (1992: 29) for the dating of the Haram inscriptions to the ʾAmīritic period (2nd c. BCE to the end of the 1st c. CE). 25 TheḤ imyarites emerge on the political scene of South Arabia in the 1st c. CE, with their capital at Ẓafār. By the 4th c. CE, the Ḥimyarite king Shammar Yuhar’ish brought the entire Yemen under Ḥimyarite control. This would mark the final phase of indigenous rule of Yemen, following which it fell to the Abyssinians, then the Persians, until finally passing into the hands of Medina. On the history of Ḥimyar, see Gaida (2009). For the medieval Arab chroniclers, all things South Arabian took the name of this latest phase of Yemen’s political history. Thus, one must exercise caution when associating things called Ḥimyaritic in the medieval sources with the pre-Islamic Ḥimyarites.
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26 For a more detailed list, see Stein (2008: 208). 27 For a full discussion of Ḥimyaritic based on the classical Arabic sources, see Rabin (1951: 42-53).
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(1) rʾy-k b-n-ḥlm k- wld-k ʾbn-ʾ mn ṭyb saw-1cs in-def-dream that-gave.birth-1cs son-acc from gold ‘I saw in the dream that I gave birth to a son of gold’ (Medieval Ḥimyaritic)29
Scholarly opinion on what the pre-Islamic Ḥimyarites may have spoken is divided. C. Robin (2007) has proposed that the Ḥimyarites spoke a non-ASA language, which is reflected in three poorly understood poetic texts,30 while Stein considers the language of those inscriptions simply a poetic register of Sabaic. Instead, he views the language of the Late Sabaic monumental and minuscule inscriptions as essentially identical to the spoken language of the Ḥimyarites.31 If Stein is correct, and I think the evidence favors his interpreta- tion, then the language called Ḥimyaritic by the medieval writers cannot be a direct continuation of one of the pre-Islamic ASA languages. The most obvi- ous difference between the two, already pointed out by Stein (2008: 208), is the replacement of one of the characteristic features of ASA, the postpositive article, with what must be interpreted as an ANA/Arabic article ʾam or ʾan. Since the article in ASA is not simply a clitic element, but morphologi- cally integrated in the noun, this seemingly simple change constitutes a rather
28 Four lines of verse sung by the soldiers of Yazīd I as they besieged Mecca have also been considered Ḥimyaritic (1951: 48), but these are more likely a parody of Ḥimyaritic, as suggested by Rabin, since they are composed in more or less good Classical Arabic, but with -k endings on the suffix conjugation verbs. 29 This line was allegedly uttered by the mother of Wahb bin Munabbih before his birth (654/55 CE) in Dhamar, Yemen. See Rabin (1951: 48) for citations and discussion. 30 The crux of this connection seems to be the identification of a prepositive articlehn in these texts, which loosely resembles the ʾan and ʾam medieval Arabic writers attributed to Ḥimyaritic. Stein (2008: 208) points out that this element occurs in only two pre-Islamic inscriptions, both of which are composed in rhymed prose. Moreover, it is unclear if this should even be inter- preted as an article; a presentative hn (< *hinna) is also possible (cf. ibid., n. 42). 31 Stein points out that the language of the minuscule texts, which were used for practical purposes, is more or less identical to the language of the monumental inscriptions. He goes on to argue that if the Ḥimyarites were using an artificial language for writing, one would expect to find at least traces of their spoken tongue in these informal documents; in the over 50 texts studied so far, no such traces have been identified (Stein, 2008).
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32 One would expect mimation here in Sabaic. 33 For a short outline of the unique features of this dialect, see Watson et al. (2006). 34 Ḥaḍramitic also exhibits this form, which Rubin correctly interprets as the result of contact with MSA (2008: 58). 35 J. Retsö (Watson et al., 2006: 38) suggested that this feature should be connected to the phenomenon of definite marking in Amharic with a semantically bleached 3ms clitic pronoun. On the development of this construction, see Huehnergard and Pat-El (2012). 36 As Watson et al. have already observed, it is unclear if this article reflects an original ʾ* al borrowed from an Arabic dialect, following which the assimilated form was leveled, or if it was originally ʾan with the regular assimilation of the final n. It is worth pointing out that a definite article in ʾ- is attested in Safaitic. Several examples of this article are attested in the corpus of inscriptions published by Ḥarāḥišah (2010). For example, no. 315 reads: l- s1ʿdlh w l-h ʾ-bkrt dat Sʿdlh and dat-him def-young.she.camel We interpret this as: ‘By S1 ʿdlh and by him is the young she-camel’, ʾ-bkrt. Ḥarāḥišah under- stood ʾbkrt as a plural form, but no such plural is attested and there is only one camel in the drawing. This exact formula is also rather common in Safaitic, but in other cases, bkrt takes the h- article. 37 This arietyv is described by Asiri (2009).
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Table 3 The relative pronoun of Late Sabaic and Riǧāl Almaʿ (adapted from Watson, 2011: 861). Riǧāl Almaʿ Late Sabaic38 Ms ḏā ḏ Fs tā t Pl wulā ʾlht (but note early Sabaic ʾl (= *ʾulā).
Alongside this Sabaic isogloss, the dialect also exhibits a characteristic trait of MSA. The reflex of Proto-Semitic *n (possibly *ṇ) appears to be r in the word for daughter, e.g. brat ‘daughter’; cf. Mehri ḥə-brīt/bərt.39 The only other place this seems to occur is in Aramaic.40 Thus, Riǧāl Almaʿ, like Rāziḥī, does not lend itself to straightforward genetic classification. Both exhibit important isoglosses, some of which constitute morphological innovations, tying them equally to Arabic, ASA, and MSA.
2.2. Hybridization in South Arabia
Considering these three sources together, a unified picture emerges which depicts southwest Arabia, especially the northern frontier, as a single linguistic area in which features from ANA, Arabic, ASA, MSA, and perhaps even other languages, diffused multilaterally. The structural congruence of these languages without a doubt facilitated the transfer of morphological and pho- nological features, but one must also take the sociolinguistic context into con- sideration. While it is difficult to argue for an absolute equilibrium at any stage, the relatively few North Arabianisms in the ʾAmīritic inscriptions, if these can be taken as a reflection of actual speech, point towards a sociolin- guistic situation in which Sabaic possessed greater cultural capital. This fact could have stunted the absorption of foreign features. The early date of these inscriptions might also suggest that the linguistic area was only beginning to form, with only a few features having diffused by the time the inscriptions were produced. The paucity of evidence makes it difficult to determine if the following centuries saw an increase of non-ASA influence on the Sabaic from this region. Following the demise of South Arabian civilization and the beginning of Islamic suzerainty, Sabaic gave way to Arabic as the language of prestige.
38 The abaicS forms are taken from (Stein, 2011: 1057). 39 See Johnstone and Smith (1987: 54). 40 On the historical phonology of this feature, see Testen (1985).
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ASA Ancient North Arabian/Old Arabic(?)/Modern South Arabian(?)
medieval Himyaritic varieties Arabic varieties
Rāzihī/RigālAlma',etc Figure 4. Areal hybridization in South Arabia.
Medieval Ḥimyaritic and, indeed, the present-day varieties such as Rāziḥī and Riǧāl Almaʿ, could represent the outcome of these new parameters of contact, resulting in a stronger ANA and Arabic admixture. So while ʾAmīritic might not pose any trouble for classification, as a clear ASA morphological isogloss, the postpositive article, is attested, and the North Arabianisms are restricted to lexical and phonological domains, medieval Ḥimyaritic is quite different. It shows no trace of an important ASA isogloss, the postpositive article, and no trace of an important Arabic isogloss, the ʾalla- based relative pronoun. Thus, it is impossible to say if it began as a dialect of ASA, which lost the postpositive article through contact with Arabic or North Arabian, or vice versa; the same is true of Rāziḥī and Riǧāl Almaʿ. All three can be considered areal hybrids.41 My understanding of the situation differs slightly from Stein (2008), who considered medieval Ḥimyaritic a linear continuation of Late Sabaic.
3. Tayyi’̣
On the other side of the Peninsula, in the northern Najd, a similar process seems to have been in play. While it has long been clear that Arabic was not
41 Kossmann (personal communication about a forthcoming publication) considers many of the modern Yemeni dialects to have arisen through a process of convergence between Ḥimyaritic and Arabic. The few features from ASA, such as the-k suffixes on the suffix conjugation and the negator dawʾ, which are scattered among the modern Arabic dialects of this region, could suggest that they were much more mixed in former times, and that the non-Arabic features slowly retracted in the face of increasing Arabic influence. Whatever the case, the Arabic dialects with isolated South Arabianisms should be considered separately from varieties such as Riǧāl Almaʿ and Rāziḥī, where the domain of non-Arabic features extends far beyond isolated morphological borrowings and the lexicon.
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42 For example, in Behnstedt and Woidich (2005: 27), the entire area between Syria and Yemen is presented as Arabophone, despite the plethora of non-Arabic epigraphic evidence. 43 These includeTaymanitic, Dadanitic, Dumaitic, Safaitic, Hismaic, the Thamudic varieties (B-D and Southern Thamudic), and the dispersed Old North Arabian inscriptions (see Macdonald, 2000: 29). 44 As Rabin cautions, the dialects were never the main focus of the Arab grammarians, and no effort was made to describe any of these varieties systematically (1951: 6). Since no Old Arabic texts from central and southern Arabia have come to light (see Al-Jallad, forthcoming b, on the genetic affiliation of theʿ Igl bn Hfʿm inscription), one often assumes that the forms reported by the grammarians centuries after the Islamic conquests are representative of the pre-Islamic situation. 45 This is the adjectival form of Ṭayyi’. 46 For example, the ʾl Ṭyʾ (*ʾāl Ṭayyiʾ) are accused of attacking camels, presumably belonging to the author, in C 5089 (C = Safaitic inscriptions published in Corpus Inscriptionum Semiti carum. Pars V. Inscriptiones Saracenicas continens, Tomus 1. Inscriptiones Safaiticae [Paris, 1950-1951]).
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Arabic. These seem to suggest that an admixture had already emerged by the time the Arab grammarians became active. The following will discuss five lin- guistic peculiarities considered characteristic of Ṭāʾī speech in light of ANA.
3.1. The elativer pronoun ḏū
One hallmark of Arabic is the reanalysis of the portmanteau Central Semitic demonstrative series based on the presentative, the asseverative, and the demonstrative base as a relative pronoun, producing the familiar CA forms ʾallaḏī, ʾallatī, etc.47 The antiquity of this construction is confirmed by the attestation of the feminine singular form ʾlt (= ʾallatī) in an Arabic inscription found at Dadān.48 Most Arabic dialects exhibit a reflex of an ʾalla- based relative, usually in the form of ʾillī, ʾillē, iddi, etc, but several ḏ-based pronouns can still be found, especially on the periphery of the Arabic Sprachraum, in Yemen, Oman, and in the Maghreb.49 Both the Omani and medieval and modern Yemeni forms can be explained through contact with either Ancient or Modern South Arabian.50 The invariableḏ ū, on the other hand, seems to be unique to the dialect of Ṭayyi’ (Rabin, 1951: 203-205). Since an ASA origin seems rather unlikely in these northern environs,51 we are left with two possible interpreta- tions: either the feature indicates that the dialect of Ṭayyi’ did not participate in an important Proto-Arabic innovation or that the ḏū form diffused from another Semitic language. None of the ANA languages seems to exhibit an ʾalla-based relative pronoun; in both Safaitic and Dadanitic, the two languages for which we have any secure evidence, the relative pronoun is ḏ-.52 While the vowel, in both cases, is not discernible from the orthography, an underlying ḏū is certainly possible. It would seem likely, then, that Ṭāʾī relative pronoun has an ANA source.
47 On this feature, see Huehnergard (2005: 186); on its status as an Arabic isogloss, see Huehnergard (2010). 48 This is JSLih 384; see ascitelliM (2006: 117-119) for a discussion and bibliography. 49 See Rabin (1951: 84). 50 This feature in Maghrebine Arabic is usually taken as evidence for South Arabian settle- ment of Northwest Africa. 51 It is best to disregard the fanciful tales about the Yemeni extraction of the Tayyi’, as the genealogical constellations of the Umayyad period reflect the political alignments of that era rather than biological descent. 52 This elativer pronoun has only been attested with reference to people in Safaitic, but in Dadanitic it is found with reference to both people and things; see Macdonald (2004: 508).
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3.2. General confusion of w and y
The collapse of triphthongs and the confusion of word final III-y and III-w roots have been recognized as an areal feature of Central Semitic.53 Classical Arabic and all of the modern dialects have experienced this change, but earlier forms of Arabic appear to preserve a distinction between the two, as is appar- ent in Quranic orthography.54 The monophthongization of these forms opened the door to the confusion of III-weak roots, a phenomenon ibn Manẓūr attributes to the Ṭayyi’, e.g. Classical maḥawtu ‘I erased’ is realized as maḥaytu (ibid.: 201). While this much is common in many modern Arabic dialects, confusion in other environments is rare. In this respect, Ṭayyi’ stands out again, as confusion is reported in the realization of Classical ḥayṯu ‘where’ as ḥawṯu and the plural ‘she-camels’, ʾawnuq for Classical ʾaynuq (ibid.).55 Similar confusion in all positions is found in Safaitic. The word ‘month’ is attested as both wrḫ and yrḫ, in medial position both ts2wq and ts2yq are found for ‘he longed for’, and in final position, s2ty is attested alongside s2tw for ‘he spent the winter’.56 This change is of course useless for genetic classifi- cation, but since the confusion of these glides is not attested in other early varieties of Arabic, its occurrence in the Ṭāʾī dialect appears to be contact induced.
3.3. The sound changeat > ah
Another areal feature of Central Semitic is the change of word final -at (the feminine ending) to -ah.57 This feature cannot be posited for Proto-Arabic, since it requires apocope to operate, but it seems to affect most post-apocope Arabic dialects. This sound change operated in most of the old northern dialects of Arabic,58 for example, in the Jabal Usays inscription, we findmsl ḥh for *maslaḥatan ‘guard post’, and it is common in the Graeco-Arabica.59
53 See Huehnergard (2005: 176-177) and Huehnergard and Rubin (2011: 268). 54 The orthography of the QCT indicates that in the earlier stages of Arabic, the final trip- thong of III-y verbs did not collapse to ā, as it was still written with a final
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Among the northern dialects, it seems that only the Ṭāʾī dialect preserved the final t in pause. While this is perhaps unremarkable on its own, especially if one assumes that final short vowels were not lost in this dialect, the preserva- tion of this ending is especially surprising in light of another sound change reported for the dialect: the loss of -t in the feminine plural (ibid.: 206). Rabin compares this to present-day dialects of the region, but in all of those cases, the feminine t is lost in the singular as well. Among the languages subsumed under the ANA rubric, it is only Dadanitic that exhibits a sound change of at > ah, but even there it seems restricted to onomastica. Safaitic retains the t ending in all environments.60 It is possible, then, that the preservation of this ending in the unbound singular was the result of contact with a North Arabian dialect.
3.4. The eflexr of the 3fs clitic pronoun *-hā is -ah
The quantity of this vowel has been much debated with no consensus as to its original value.61 Nevertheless, nearly all varieties of Arabic possess a reflex of a form terminating in a long vowel, *-hā, which agrees with the orthography of the QCT, < Hʾ >. The Ṭāʾī dialect, however, is reported to have a shortened form, ah, and Rabin cites several modern dialects of this region which also possess such a form. While the Safaitic script does not indicate final vowels of any quantity, word boundary sandhi suggests that the 3fs pronoun did not terminate in a vowel.62 It is impossible to determine the directionality of this change, that is, whether Safaitic took over this form from an adjacent Arabic dialect or if the opposite is true. However, considering that the feature is geo- graphically restricted to the Ṭāʾī dialect, and present-day Arabic dialects of the same region, it seems reasonable to assume that this form made its way into Arabic from a North Arabian language.
to cover instances of Arabic transcribed in Greek in the pre-Islamic period. This sound change operated in the pre-Islamic dialect of Petra, as is clear from the Petra Papyri, e.g. Φοσεα /phosea/ < * fuṣayyat- PN and Αλνασβα /alnasba/ < *al-Naṣbat- ‘the farm, plantation’; see Al-Jallad et al. (2013). 60 For details, see Macdonald (2004: 502-503). 61 For a discussion on the anceps vowels, see Hasselbach (2004) and Al-Jallad (forthcoming a). 62 The 3ms and 3fs clitic pronoun followed by the definite article, h-, is often written with only one h, indicating that the pronouns were not followed by a vowel, e.g. l-h rgm for the expected l-h h-rgm ‘for him/her is the cairn’; see Macdonald (2004: 507).
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3.5. h-forms in the presentatives
A sound rule appears to have operated in Proto-Arabic whereby word initial h- in several function words and morphemes shifted to ʾ, producing the following:63
Definite Article *han > ʾan - ʾal Conditional *hin > ʾin Presentative *hinna > ʾinna Causative verb *haqtila > ʾaqtala
TheṬ āʾī dialect again either did not participate in this change, exhibiting both hin for Proto-Arabic *ʾin and hinnah for Proto-Arabic *ʾinna, or restored the h- in these forms through language contact. The grammarians do not com- ment on the shape of the causative verb in the Ṭāʾī dialect, but the article was ʾam. Theʾ Amīritic inscriptions also exhibit a conjunction hn, which would seem to have originated in a North Arabian language, but which variety exactly is unclear. Neither of these forms is attested in Safaitic, although the subordinating particle ʾn (< *ʾan) is encountered.64 The evidence from Dadanitic is contradictory; it is the only ANA language to attest an h-reflex of the causative, but ʾ- causatives are also found, and an ambiguous ʾn is attested twice, both in a heavily damaged context.65 That theh- forms in the Ṭāʾī dialect are loans seems certain, but the language in which they originated remains unclear.
3.6. The genetic affiliation of the dialect Ṭof ayyi’
It is remarkable that, even with our very limited data, contact-induced simi- larities between Tayyi’ and various varieties of ANA are clear. It is, however, impossible to go beyond these limited observations and make any statements about the degree of admixture or even the directionality of diffusion, that is, whether the Ṭayyi’ dialect began as a variety of ANA, which was heavily influ- enced by Arabic, or vice versa.
63 For a discussion of this sound change, see Voigt (1998: 266-267). 64 See Macdonald (2004: 520). 65 Both are attested in the same inscription, JSLih 40. The first is interpreted as the condi- tional if (= Arabic ʾin) and the second as the presentative (= Arabic ʾinna); see Macdonald (2004: 520).
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4. Conclusions
To recap, there seem to be two detectable micro-linguistic areas in Arabia in the pre-Islamic period: southwest Arabia and northern Najd.66 The earliest evidence for the emergence of a linguistic area in the southwest comes in the form of the mixed ʾAmīritic inscriptions at the turn of the Common Era. These inscriptions point towards significant contact, but genetic boundaries remained largely intact. By the 9th century, this area seems to have reached the point where the genetic affiliation of some of its varieties was no longer clear. The emergent hybrids, which include medieval Ḥimyaritic and the modern Rāziḥī and Riǧāl Almaʿ, exhibit isoglosses from several independent lineages, such that it is impossible to identify the direction of diffusion. The situation in the northern area is considerably less clear. The remarks of the Arab gram- marians suggest that the dialect of Ṭayyi’ shared many features with the ANA languages. Thus, a process of diffusion analogous to what was witnessed in South Arabia is probably responsible for the mixed profile of the medievalṬ āʾī dialect. One final remark is in order. Linguistic areas and hybridization must be considered when attempting to reconstruct earlier forms of Arabic. This is especially true of the Yemeni dialects, where it is difficult to distin- guish between features inherited from Proto-Arabic and those which are the result of diffusion from other closely related Semitic languages. Without factoring in contact, the k-endings of the suffix conjugation in some of the Yemeni dialects, against the t- endings elsewhere, could motivate one to posit an asymmetrical 1cs ku, 2ms ta, and 2fs ti series for the suffix conjuga- tion of Proto-Arabic. The Riǧāl Almaʿ dialect, for instance, has generated much excitement on account of its being the only ‘Arabic dialect’ to pre- serve gender and number agreement in the relative pronoun. But consider- ing our discussion, on what basis can one even call it an Arabic dialect? The ‘preserved’ relative series is in fact a Sabaic isogloss, and other features point equally away from Arabic. The great gaps in our knowledge of pre- Islamic Arabic and the centuries of contact between the modern dialects in all parts of the Arabic Sprachraum demand great caution from the historical lin- guist who would seek to incorporate them into the reconstruction of Proto-Arabic.
66 There of course may have been many more, but our observations are limited by the surviv- ing sources.
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