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Mediterranean Language Review MEDITERRANEAN LANGUAGE REVIEW edited by Matthias Kappler, Werner Arnold and Till Stellino with the editorial assistance of Ingeborg Hauenschild 19 (2012) Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden Contents Articles Klaus Beyer Die Entstehung des Alphabets .................................................................................. 1 Adolfo Zavaroni Il suffisso di compagnia -pi, -pe ed il suffisso agentivo/pertinentivo -si/-osio in etrusco e falisco .................................................................................................... 13 Michael Waltisberg Zur Syntax eines arabischen Beduinendialekts ....................................................... 35 Dimitris Evripidou Factors Influencing Greek Cypriot Senior-Adults’ Attitudes Towards Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek ............................................ 59 Ibrahim Bassal Hebrew and Aramaic Substrata in Spoken Palestinian Arabic .............................. 85 Edward Y. Odisho Mechanisms for Lexical Enrichment in Modern Aramaic....................................... 105 Book Reviews Scott N. Callaham Modality and the Biblical Hebrew Infinitive Absolute (Christian Stadel) ....................................................................................................... 117 Gianluca Frenguelli & Laura Melosi (eds.) Lingua e cultura dell’Italia coloniale (Francesco Bianco) .................................................................................................... 121 Jared Greenblatt The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Amәdiya (Steven E. Fassberg) ................................................................................................. 131 Annette Herkenrath Wh-Konstruktionen im Türkischen (Jaklin Kornfilt) ......................................................................................................... 134 Veronika Ritt-Benmimoun Texte im arabischen Beduinendialekt der Region Douz (Südtunesien) (Judith Rosenhouse) ................................................................................................... 146 Hebrew and Aramaic Substrata in Spoken Palestinian Arabic Ibrahim Bassal (Beit-Berl College & Arab College, Haifa) 1 Introduction (1) The Palestinian dialects include layers of ancient languages that belong to the earliest historical periods of culture of Palestine indigenous tongues: Canaanite, classical Hebrew (Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew), Aramaic (particularly Western Aramaic), Persian, Greek and Latin. Moreover, from the new era, it con- tains components of the Turkish and European languages, mainly English, French, German and Italian. Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, there has been a significant influence of Hebrew on the Palestinian Arab dialect as a result of the immediate contact between the Palestinian population and the Jewish population in Israel.1 Former peoples and cultures found in Palestine in past centuries had an impact, directly or indirectly, on the linguistic profile of Palestine. One of the earliest ele- ments making a significant mark on Palestinian Arab dialects is the Aramaic layer. (2) Aramaic predominated as the spoken and written language in Syria, Babylonia, and Palestine for over fifteen hundred years, from the 7th and 6th centuries B.C.E. to the 9th and 10th centuries C.E.2 From the mid-seventh century B.C.E. officials in the Assyrian kingdom began to use the Aramaic language for writing official docu- ments. During the period of the Assyrian empire, Aramaic spread across the whole area including Palestine. In the Bible, 2 Kings 18:26, we find evidence of the use of Aramaic for diplomatic exchanges at this time rather than for daily use. During the time of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, around the year 500 B.C.E., King Darius I (522–486 B.C.E.) used the Aramaic language as the official language for admini- stration. This choice increased the prestige of the Aramaic language. As the official language of the state, it was in use from western Iran to the Mediterranean, and down to the southern part of Egypt. However, with the rise of Islam in the 7th cen- tury, this situation changed, and Aramaic was supplanted by the Arabic of the con- querors which became the spoken and written language. Late Aramaic had been at its peak and dominated the entire region, both orally and in writing, among Jews, 1 For a detailed discussion on the foreign strata in Palestinian Arabic, see Bassal (2010). 2 About the language of Palestine from 200 B.C.E–200 C.E., see Greenfield (1978); and about Hebrew and Aramaic in the Persian period, see Greenfield & Naveh (1999); on diglosia in Palestine in ancient times, see Spolsky (1983). 86 Ibrahim Bassal Christians, Mandaeans, Samaritans, and pagans. Simon Hopkins writes that Arab conquest changed this linguistic situation rapidly and decisively. In most areas, people stopped speaking Aramaic, and the literary activity was interrupted com- pletely or was reduced to very minor proportions, Ancient Aramaic languages were preserved for ritual cult and tradition. In the course of time, indigenous people un- derstood them less and less. Linguistically and religiously, the area became a Mus- lim Arab region, and in the new era, Aramaic survived only among Christian mi- norities, Jews and Mandaeans.3 Later Aramaic4 was in direct contact with Arabic and its dialects, and we still find residues of it in dialects spoken in Palestine and Israel. Such residues have been naturalized, and it is quite hard to identify them. They belong to different fields of everyday life such as seasonal agriculture, house- keeping, tools and utensils, alongside Christian religious terms. However, within these major macro groups in Palestinian dialects which are spoken in Israel and Palestine, the degree of influence varies from one region inside Israel to another. There are the North (Galilee dialects),5 the Centre (the Triangle-Muṯallaṯ dialect),6 the South (the Bedouin dialect),7 the West Bank dialects. Also, the Jewish, Christian 3 Hopkins 2000: 119. 4 On distribution of Aramaic, see Beyer (1986). 5 The Arab inhabitants of al-Ǧalīl (Galilee) in the northern part of Israel are very heterogeneous, contrary to the Muṯallaṯ, where both the population and the spoken dialect are homogeneous in character, or to the Naqab area with the Bedouin dialect. The Galilee population consists of various religious groups: Muslims, Christians, Druze, and to some extent different ethnic groups: Circassians (non-Arab Muslims), Armenians (non-Arab Christians), and Maronites (Christians of Syrian origin who speak a unique dialect that resembles the Lebanese-Syrian dialect of the Maronite communities). The vernacular dialects of these groups have deep variety. Sometimes we find differences between one village and another and among the members of the same religious community. There are several works about Palestinian Arabic dialects: Bergsträsser (1915) Sprachatlas von Syrien und Palästina, Blanc (1953) Studies in North Palestinian Arabic, Piamenta (1964) wrote on the use of tenses, aspects and moods of Jerusalem dialect; (1959) wrote chapters on the Arab dialects of the Central Galilee. Palva (1965) Lower Galilean Arabic Dialects, Rozenhouse (1969), wrote on the dialect of Sakhnīn town; (1984) wrote on the Bedouin dialects in the North of Israel, and Levin (1995), wrote about Arabic of Jerusalem, Geva-Kleinberger (2004) wrote on the Arab dialects of the residents of Haifa in the first half of the 20th century that was spoken by Muslims, Christians and Jews. He also dealt with the Arab Jewish dialect in the North of Israel in the first half of the 20th century (in Haifa, Tzfat and Tiberias, where Jews lived beside Arabs); (2009) Autochthonous texts in the Arabic dialect of the Jews of Tiberias, Khariush (2004) published a book about the phonological description of the Palestinian dialects, through surveying the researches that had dealt with the Palestinian dialect, its distribution and linkage to old Arab dialects [in Arabic]. Havelova (2000) Arabic Dialects of Nazareth which contains dialectological and sociolinguistic description. See also Bassal (2008) (Western Galilee) Kufur-Yasīf Dialect: A Morphophonemic Description. 6 On the Muṯallaṯ dialects, see O. Jastrow’s (2004) paper that deals with phonological aspects and morphophonemics. 7 On the Bedouin dialect of the Negev, see Blanc (1970); Shawarba (2007) about the Tiyaha Bedouin dialect and Henkin (2010). Hebrew and Aramaic Substrata 87 and Samaritan dialects of Aramaic that were spoken in Palestine each left its own mark. Therefore, it is reasonable that the substrata from Late Aramaic dialects that were spoken in Palestine on the eve of the Arab expansion were pushed back gradu- ally, and Arabic became the dominant language in the Levant, supplanting Aramaic as the language of spoken communication. But Aramaic traces remained in Arabic in the regions that were formerly dominated by Aramaic, especially in rural areas.8 Our discussion of residues concerns itself with Late Western Aramaic with the sub-dia- lects: Jewish Aramaic, Christian Aramaic, and Samaritan Aramaic.9 These came in direct contact with Arabic and Arab dialects, and it is only natural that through this contact, they would affect the existing linguistic profile of Palestine.10 (3) Palestinian Arabic is a Levantine Arabic dialect subgroup spoken by Palestini- ans. It falls into three groups: urban Palestinian, rural Palestinian and Bedouin. Of these, the urban dialect is the closest to northern Levantine Arabic (such as Syrian and Lebanese), while the
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