Arabic history and the comparative method Jonathan Owens University Of Bayreuth

ﻣﻠﺨﺺ إن ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻟﺪراﺳﺎت اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ واﻟﺴﺎﻣﯿﺔ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻐﺮب ﻟﻢ ﯾﻌﻂ أﯾﺔ أھﻤﯿﺔ ﻟﻠﮭﺠﺎت اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ ﺳﻮى ﻣﻨﺬ وﻗﺖ ﻗﺮﯾﺐ ﻣﻦ ﺣﯿﺚ اﻟﻀﻮء اﻟﺬي ﯾﻤﻜﻦ أن ﺗﺴﻠﻄﮫ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺘﺎرﯾﺦ اﻟﻠﻐﻮي . ﯾﺘﺠﻠﻰ ھﺬا اﻷﻣﺮ ﻓﻲ ﺛﻼث ﻧﻘﺎط . أوﻻ، ﻟﻢ ﯾﺤﻆ ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻟﻠﻐﺔ ﺑﺎھﺘﻤﺎم اﻟﻠﻐﻮﯾﯿﻦ اﻟﻌﺮب أﻧﻔﺴﮭﻢ، إذ ﺑﻘﻲ اﻟﻤﻮﺿﻮع ﻋﻨﺪھﻢ رھﯿﻦ اﻟﺠﺪل اﻟﺴﯿﺎﺳﻲ واﻟﺜﻘﺎﻓﻲ . ﺛﺎﻧﯿﺎ، ﻟﯿﺲ ھﻨﺎك اﻗﺘﻨﺎع راﺳﺦ ﺑﺄن ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻟﻠﮭﺠﺎت اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ ﯾﻤﻜﻦ أن ﯾﺴﺎھﻢ ﻓﻲ ﻓﮭﻢ ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻟﻠﻐﺎت اﻟﺴﺎﻣﯿﺔ ﺑﺼﻔﺔ ﻋﺎﻣﺔ . ﺛﺎﻟﺜﺎ، ﯾﺴﻠﱠﻢ ﻋﺎدة ﺑﺄن ﻟﻜﻞ اﻟﻠﮭﺠﺎت ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ ﻣﻦ اﻟﺘﻐﯿﺮ اﻟﻠﻐﻮي، وھﻮ ﺗﻘﻠﯿﺪﯾﺎ ﻣﻮﺿﻮع اﻟﻠﺴﺎﻧﯿﺎت اﻟﺘﺎرﯾﺨﯿﺔ، دون اﻷﺧﺬ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺤﺴﺒﺎن ﺑﺄن ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ ﺑﻌﺾ اﻟﻠﮭﺠﺎت ﻗﺪ ﯾﺸﯿﺮ إﻟﻰ أن اﻟﻠﻐﺔ ﻗﺪ ﺗﺒﻘﻰ ﻣﺴﺘﻘﺮة ﻛﺬﻟﻚ . وﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻟﻠﮭﺠﺎت اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ ﯾﻤﺘﺪ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻗﻞ ﺗﻘﺪﯾﺮ إﻟﻰ اﻟﻘﺮن اﻟﺴﺎﺑﻊ اﻟﻤﯿﻼدي، وھﻲ ﻓﺘﺮة زﻣﻨﯿﺔ ﺗﻘﺎرب ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻟﻠﻐﺎت اﻟﺠﺮﻣﺎﻧﯿﺔ اﻟﻐﺮﺑﯿﺔ أو اﻟﻠﻐﺎت اﻟﺴﻼﻓﯿﺔ . وﻟﺬﻟﻚ، وﺑﻐﺾ اﻟﻨﻈﺮ ﻋﻤﺎ ﯾﻤﻜﻦ أن ﯾﻘﺎل ﺑﺨﺼﻮص اﻟﻌﺎﻣﻠﯿﻦ اﻷوﻟﯿﻦ، ﻓﺈن دراﺳﺔ ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻟﻠﮭﺠﺎت اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ ﯾﻌﺪ ﻣﺸﺮوﻋﺎ ﻓﻜﺮﯾﺎ ﻣﮭﻤﺎ ﻓﻲ ﺣﺪ ذاﺗﮫ . ﻓﻲ ھﺬا اﻟﻤﻘﺎل، ﺳﺄﺑﯿﻦ ﻛﯿﻒ أن اﻟﻤﻨﮭﺞ اﻟﻤﻘﺎرن ھﻮ اﻷداة اﻟﺘﻘﻠﯿﺪﯾﺔ اﻻﺳﺎﺳﯿﺔ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻠﺴﺎﻧﯿﺎت ا ﻟﺘﺎرﯾﺨﯿﺔ، وﯾﻤﻜﻦ أن ﯾﻌﺘﻤﺪ ﻋﻠﯿﮭﺎ ﻓﻲ ﻣﻘﺎرﺑﺔ ﺗﺎرﯾﺦ اﻟﻠﮭﺠﺎت اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ اﻟﻤﻌﺎﺻﺮة . ﺳﺄﻧﻄﻠﻖ ﻣﻦ ﺗﺼﻨﯿﻒ رﺑﺎﻋﻲ ﻟﻠﻨﺘﺎﺋﺞ اﻟﺘﻲ ﯾﻤﻜﻦ أن ﯾﺤﺼﻞ ﻋﻠﯿﮭﺎ اﻋﺘﻤﺎدا ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﻤﻌﻄﯿﺎت اﻟﻤﺘﻮﻓﺮة ﻟﺪﯾﻨﺎ، ﺳﻮاء ﻣﻦ اﻟﺤﺎﺿﺮ أو ﻣﻦ اﻟﻤﺼﺎدر اﻟﻠﻐﻮﯾﺔ اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ .

Abstract In the long western tradition of the study of and Semitic the Arabic have, if at all, only recently been taken seriously as entities which can contribute to the understanding of language history. There are three crucial aspects to this reality. For one, the issue of language history from the perspective of the Arabic linguistic tradition is largely irrelevant, subservient for the most part to constructs based on language and culture politics. For the second the jury is still, as it were, out. This is the degree to wh ich Arabic dialectal history will elucidate the history of Semitic in general. For the third, the answer is in, and that is that dialects not only have a history, but from the perspective of general historical , a linguistic history which offers special insights into not only how languages change, traditionally the key question in , but also how languages remain stable. This is because a relatively transparent reconstructibility within a single language is available which is minimally datable to the seventh century CE, a chronological period comparable to the entire historical linguistic era of West Germanic or Slavic. Thus, regardless of the results relating to the first two issues, the historical study of Arabic dialects is an interesting intellectual enterprise in its own right. In this article I illustrate how the traditional, but for historical linguistics, basic instrument of the comparative method can be applied in the study of an historical linguistics which begins with the contemporary Arabic dialects. I offer an initial four - point typology for the different kinds of results which can be obtained relative to the different sources which are available to us, both from the contemporary era, and from the rich thinking o f the Arabic linguistic tradition.

© The International Journal of Arabic Linguistics (IJAL) Vol.1 Issue 1 (pp. 1 - 27 )

1 . Status of dialects in intellectual traditions studying Arabic In the western tradition, the linguistic history of Arabic has traditionally been defined as an appendage of . Brockelmann’s Grundriss sets the tone for Arabic, and for in general, in that chronology defines historical linguistics, with the Classical language situated within a diachronic linearity to the contemporary spoken dialects. Thus Arabic dialects in the Middle Ages are known “…only by way of meager notes” (I: 25, “nuraussp ärlichen Notizen ” ), while contemporary dialects were first treated by European scholars (“ersteurop äische, namentlich deutsche Gelehrte des 19. Jahrhundert”). The stages of language history appear to follow diachrony in Brockelmann’s laconic summary. This rests on a western Arabicist tradition where the main linguistic parameter by which the difference between Classical Arabic and the dialects is defined is that of written = Classical vs. spoken = . As late as 1980 the Arabic dialects were not considered relevant to mainstream Semitic language history (Moscati et al 1980: 14). In this tradition th e two varieties are customarily ter med Altarabisch vs. Neuarabisch. This dichotomy, however, is based not on comparative linguistic parameters, but rather on the parameter Old = written, Neo = spoken. The difference is in the first instance based on mode a nd medium, not methodology. This designation alone creates the impression that there is a direct historical relation, from the Old to the New. I n reality, ( Owens ( 2009, 2013 c : 454 ), after Brockelmann there were few attempts to actually define the so - calle d neo - Arabic varieties in a comparative linguistic sense (see below). Bergsträsser (1928: 156) is one of the few Arabicists who defined the key parameter by which the h istorical relation between the dialects and Classical Arabic could be given historical l inguistic substance, arguing that the dialects derive from a unitary bas is (“einheitliche Grundform” ) vs. the Classical language . However, Bergsträsser himself did not define what the unitary basis was, and as soon as attempts were made to give linguistic s ubstance to this unita ry basis, as with Ferguson (1959 ) and Fischer and Jastrow (1980: Introduction ), the ‘V enn diagrams’ turn out not to add up in a particularly clear fashion. By way of comparative orientation, t here are relatively few features shared by all the ‘Arabic dialects’ set, to the exclusion of the Classical Arabic segment. The V enn diagram intersecting the features common both to all dialects and to Classical Arabic would look something like Figure 1a with a large number of intersecting feature s in the middle.

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Figure 1: Intersection of shared features, Dialects and Classical Arabic

In fact , what are typically cited as features distinguishing Classical Arabic from the dialects are those which in fact identify only some of the dialects again st CA, such as the lack of a morphological FPL in many dialects (e.g. Cairene, Damascus ; see Rets ö 2013 ). This point will be exemplified in greater detail in section 3.2 and 3.3 below. In a classic comparative linguistic sense, however, without a single innovation , or better, sets of innovation, characterizing an entire branch, there is no justification for joining all members into a single entity, such as ‘neo Arabic’. The thinking of many Arabicists appears to run as follows: D1 is a dialect, D2 is a di alect, if feature F1 is found in D1, and F1 differs from Classical Arabic, D2 must also differ from Classical Arabic. For instance, if Cairene = D1 lacks a feminine plura l (= F1) , and Nigerian Arabic is also an Arabic dialect, D2, then Nigerian Arabic must also differ from Classical Arabic, even though Nigerian Arabic happens to have a morphological feminine plural. In the final analysis, the entity customarily referred to as ‘neo - Arabic’ is a circular construct defined against the temporal parameter that w hatever is spoken today as a native Arabic variety is neo - Arabic. Turning to the Arabic linguistic tradition there never developed a fully - fledged historical linguistic consciousness. However, there are indications at least of such thinking in the Fiqh al - Lu ɣa tradition which crystallized in the late 4 th /10 th centuries in the works of Ibn Faris and Tha ʕaalabi. Ibn Faris ( Ṣaaħibi : 76 - 86 ) does recognize the idea of lexical change, for instance noting that kafara ‘show disbelief’ has a meaning in the Islamic era which developed from an earlier one meaning ‘cover’. Such incipient historical linguistic thinking, however, served not to define an independent domain of research (contrary to many other linguistic sub - domains in the ALT, Owens 2014: 125 ), but rather to set off a presumed Classical Arabic from other languages (e.g. G ə ’ ə z, Syriac, Farsi) and other . Arabic dialects, in this tradition were defined out of existence, not for historical linguistic reasons, but simply because they were

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con sidered sub - standard against the parameters of Ibn Faris’ idealized Classical Arabic. In this ALT sub - domain, language policy determined the status of linguistic variants. In this paper I would like first to briefly sketch in section 2 how the comparative method can be applied to an understanding of Arabic language history. In section 3 I illustrate four types of historical linguistic statuses which can be defined acros s contemporary Arabic dialects. Given the newness of the approach developed here, there i s no claim to comprehensiveness. Indeed, examples are chosen to show how diverse the issues addressed are. In section 4 I outline broad relations which obtain between A rabic dialects and and sociolinguist ics and summarize in section 6 .

2 . The co mparative method The comparative method is retrospective in that it deduces where forms arose on the basis of observed outcomes. I term the relation one between ‘successor’ and ‘antecedent forms’. The observed outcomes are the successor forms, the antecede nts customarily the reconstructed forms. There is no chronological time limit as to which periods the comparative method can be applied to . Successor forms may themselves be quite ancient. For instance, it is often postulated (Zimmern 1898: 98, Moscati et. al. 1980: 139) that the proto - Semitic first and second person singular forms should be reconstructed as *k and *t, respectively (ignoring the vowels). This conclusion is based, inter alia, on the fact that G əʕəz, south Semitic had - k in both first and sec ond person ( - k uu , - ka a , - ki i ) whereas northwest Semitic, going as far back as Ugaritic, had – t in both persons, with Northwest Semitic generalizing * - t, south Semitic * - k throughout. Though G əʕəz (about 300 BCE) is attested some 1,600 years after Ugaritic, as far as reconstruction goes both languages are on an equal footing for making inferences about proto - Semitic. The results of applying the comparative method to successor forms are limited by i nnovations and splits, which themselves are determined by the comparative method. This point may be illustrated with a small c ase study which fits in type 3.4 below. Simplifying the situation somewhat, Western Sudanic Arabic (=WSA ) , the Arabic of western Su dan, Chad, far northern Cameroon and northeastern Nigeria shows the following alternation. (1) 1/2MSG (a) C - t - V or V:t (b) C - #

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mašee - t ‘I went’ gul - t - a ‘I said it’ gul - Ø ‘I said’ The 1SG perfective verb has the alternation – t ~ Ø, with – t occurring (inter alia) after a long vowel or before a suffix, otherwise Ø in word - final position. It is clear that the – t is in some sense present even in its absence, as the customary short forms of weak medial verb occur even when no – t suffix actually is realized. ( 2 ) is the normal imperative, and hence contrasts with the 1SG. ( 2 ) guul ‘say!’ The alternation in ( 1 ) is limited to western Sudanic Arabic, and given that all other varieties of Arabic have – t throughout the paradigm, a constant * - t may be reconstructed for ancestral WSA as well. What one cannot do in this case is to argue that WSA ( 1 ) represents an original situation, with all other varieties acquiring a – t in condition ( 1 b). In comparative linguistic terms, WSA is characterized by an innovative split, shown in Figure 2 . The split ushers in a new phase of language history, which encompasses all WSA varieties, and only these. Having established its linguistic reality, it cannot in turn be used to argue f or its presence prior to the reconstructed split . Figure 2 , development of 1, 2SG in WSA - * t

- t - t, ~ Ø The left branch is what is found outside of WSA, the right the innovation which marks all of the WSA region (NE Nigeria, northern Cameroon, through central Chad, western Sudan). In this case, the great majority of dialects continue the antecedent form. As historical linguists have often noted, the comparative method can return messy results (see Ross 1996 for a classic exposition of the problem) . Mou lton (1954: 38) points out that, on the one hand, genetic relation (inheritance), change via contact and independent parallel development, are in a constant interpretive tension with one another. On the other hand, Moulton is equally adamant that without t assumption of the efficacy of the comparative method,

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historical linguistics as we know it would not exist (see sections 3.2, 5 for further discussion along these lines). Moreover, one important issue not usually given attention in historical linguistic s at all, and which falls outside the purview of the comparative method, is addressed in 3.1. Nonetheless, the comparative method is probably the most important methodological tool in historical linguistics, 1 without which the sub - discipline would not exis t in anything like the rich form we know it today.

3 . A typology of historical linguistic outcomes Arabic is vast language. It is spoken today by approximately 300 million individuals, the overwhelming majority of these native speakers. It is attested in the rich Classical tradition stretching back to the seventh century, and very sporadically in inscriptions before that date. In a democratic world all of these varieties feed into a linguistic history of the language. It is precisely these two attributes of A rabic, its geographic breadth and the ability to link present - day populations to old migrations which led me to suggest (1998b) that the comparative method should be applied to Arabic itself, an idea which Versteegh (2010: 241) noted, “In Arabic linguistic s, has never been popular” . This is despite the fact that the period covered by the diasporic era, ca. 610 - present, some 1400 years, begins only slightly after the period assumed for proto West Germanic (ca. 300 - 500 CE), and extends over a far larger geogr aphical area. The comparative method, by definition, leads to the concept of a proto - Arabic. Note that the linguistic world which developed in the wake of the Arabic - Islamic expansion is very much that of Dixon’s (1997) punctuated equilibrium, which creat es an ideal situation for linguistic reconstruction. 2 In this section I introduce a basic typology for dealing with this diversity.

3 . 1 . Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même One of the most banal, yet overlooked facts of Arabic is that it exhibits a high degree of structural stability over long chronological periods. The most dramatic instance of this is what I

1 , epigraphic and written attestations are, for instance, other important aspects of historical linguistics. In my view, grammaticalization theory is helpful in providing a general metaphor of language change, but it is of only margin al value in the detailed reconstruction of individual language histories (see special issue of Languages Sciences , 2001 for critical review of grammaticalization theory, Owens, ms. 2014). Non - standard abbreviations used are: ALT Arabic linguistic tradition , EA Emirati Arabic, EM emphasis marker, N ‘intrusive – n, T heavy ‘n’ or energic, WSA western Sudanic Arabic. 2 While to balance the equation, the pre - diaspora period was marked largely by equilibrium, creating conditions for contact among dialects and ween Arabic and co - territorial languages.

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have termed the ‘miraculous paradigm’, simply the perfect and impe rfect verb systems. A segment of this paradigm serves as illustration . Table 1 : The miraculous paradigm Uzbekistan Emirati Moroccan Nigerian Classical 1 a - ktib a - kt i b n ə - kt ə b a - ktub a - ktub - u 2M ti - ktib ti - ktib (t ə - kt əb) ta - ktub ta - ktub - u 2F ti - ktib - iin ti - ktib - iin t ə - k ətb - i ta - ktub - i ta - ktub - iin 3M yi - ktib yi - ktib y ə - kt əb i - ktub ya - ktub - u 3F ti - ktib ti - ktib t ə - kt ə b ta - ktub ta - ktub - u Period of first settlement in region 710 - 800 pre - Islamic 700 - 1200 1400 Islamic The elements of the paradigm hardly require explanation in this journal. One observes the same inflectional elements (e.g. a - , 3 t - , y - ) in the same sequence (t - … - iin), clustered around the same type of stem in variety after variety. What is notable is th e geographical expanse of these elements, as can be read across the top of the table, coupled with the long periods of chronological separation among them, as can be read off the bottom line. Whereas historical linguistics has traditionally been concerned with explanations of language change, there has been far less attention given to linguistic stability. In many cases, to be sure, issues of long - term stability are difficult to follow. The vast majority of languages of the world are very small, under 5,00 0 speakers, and they are generally found in geographically contiguous areas, so that drawing historical inferences based on geographical separation is difficult, frequently impossible. Arabic represents a very different situation. As noted above, t he Arabi c - Islamic expansion beginning in the early 7 th century took Arabic well outside its original Middle Eastern homeland so that how much a given variety has changed, relative to its peers, can be ascertained against a fixed chronological timeline. In the curr ent case, there has been effectively no change at all in the basic verbal morpho - syntactic categories over a period of approximately 1,400 years.

3 With allowance for the North African 1SG n - (Owens 2003).

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The historically contingent fate of Arabic 4 gives linguists an object for investigating basic issues of langu age stability. Without going into details here, it would be circular to claim that the complex morphologic al paradigm in Table 1 is the reason for its great stability. Rather, its stability is to be found in large part in the discourse function of the indi vidual members of the paradigm. In particular, Arabic is a language which, in its native, spoken guise, obeys the general pragmatic dictum that grammatical subjects should not be overtly expressed unless they need be, which can be understood as a Gricean r eflex, be brief, avoid prolixity . The discourse conditions for expressing subjects in Arabic have been described in a number of articles (Owens et al. 2009, 2010, 2013). In an exchange such as the following (from Al - Rawi 1990: 121) there is only one overt subject in the three clauses. (3) Emirati Arabic excerpt … ( - 6) - wu yaa iθ - θaani - and came.M DEF - other - And the other came - Ø rigad - Ø slept.M - And he slept - wu Ø ya - t - and Ø came - F - And she came (Al - Rawi 1990: 121) 6 clauses before, no overt subject The overt subject, iθ - θaani , is new. The following 3MSG verb continues this same referent, without an overt subject(avoid prolixity). A shift in subject in the next clause is, however, not signalled by an overt subject ( against Gundel et al. 2010: 1782 ), but simply by a FSG verb form. In the discourse context of this narrative, it is an easy matter for the interlocutors to know that the referent is to be found in the feminine referent, last mentioned some six clauses back, who has played a major role in the story. Th e paradigm in Table 1 , in short, is a referent - tracking device which supports the ‘minimalist’ representation of subjects which is a basic trait of spoken Arabic.

4 I.e. it is assumed that the ‘success’ of Arabic as a regional and world language depends on historically - explicable, but ultimately accidental forces of history, in the same way the current success of English as a global language is due to historically definable, but ultimately accidental forces of history.

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To give one brief, concrete idea about how the paradigm in Table 1 works in conjunction with the realization of subjects in discourse, two of the dialects mentioned in it were chosen and tagged for a number of discourse categories (as in Owens et al. 2013 ; Nigerian Arabic texts taken from Owens and Hassan online corpus ). About six hours of texts were tagged for various discourse variables, divided equally between EA and NA. Emirati and Nigerian Arabic are minimally separated from one another by about 1,200 years. This chronology follows from the historically attested migr ations from the Gulf region to Upper Egypt in the 8 th - 10 centuries. From Upper Egypt Arabs migrated to the Lake Chad region and to present - day NE Nigeria in 1400 (see Figure 4) . Although indirect, there is a plausible demographic historical link between th e two populations. Figure 3 Route of ancestral migration, Gulf (Emirati) – NE Nigeria, via Upper Egypt

When the degree of occurrence of null and overt subjects with verbal predicates in a parallel sample of about three hours per dialect is taken, it emerges that the distributions are nearly identical between the two dialects. These are given in Table 2.

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Table 2 : Token count, null and overt subjects

O vert subject with verb Null subject with verb

E A 6 38 985

N A 6 44 873

What is extrapolated from this is that the postulated correlation between occurrence of null and overt subjects and the deployment of the person - marked verbal forms is constant between the two dialects. That is, parallel to the near - identity of paradigms i n Table 1, there is a near identity in the way the individual forms correlate in actual discourse with null and overt subjects. Forsaking greater detail at this point, 5 the hypothesis can therefore be put forward that in historical linguistic terms, the paradigm in Table 1 should be viewed not as an isolated paradigm, but rather the reflex of a structure held in place by the requirement of subject expression in spoken Ar abic. The fact that both the paradigm and basic conditions defining it in discourse usage is the same in two widely separated dialects, both geographically and chronologically, allows one to reconstruct the underlying discourse structure to at least ca. 80 0 CE, the approximate period when the ancestral Emirati and NA populations would have split. The general lesson that is drawn from this first example is that correlating traditional paradigmatic classes – verbs as here, plural classes, demonstratives, obje ct pronouns, the list is long – with their usage in discourse allows an historical linguistics to be queried which necessarily has escaped us to this point. Necessarily because it is only by studying actual oral usage, i.e. the contemporary language, that inferences can be drawn about the relation between morphological forms and their discourse support. What is particularly interesting, from a purely linguistic perspective in the case of Arabic is that change and stability in language can be studied over a very long chronological period.

5 A more detailed quantitative examination of six discourse categories based on Owens et al. 2013 r ealized by overt/null subjects in the two samples shows that the relative ranking of the six factors is identical between Nigerian Arabic and Emirati. In both, for instance, a pronominal subject (quantifiers, pronouns) is most likely to be overt while subj ects continued from a previous clause are most likely to be null (as in (3) above).

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3 . 2 . Linking the contemporary and the classical In the previous section an example was given as to how certain historical inferences can only be drawn from the contemporary language. The data is necessarily contemporary since s poken discourse requires sound recordings. Any written source, even the Middle Arabic genre, will necessarily have orality filtered through normed writing conventions. A second type of historical inference which can be drawn from contemporary data is inte resting because it can be shown to link up with what in the Classical tradition also exists, though as a subsidiary set of data. One such example was discussed in Owens (2006/9: chapter 7 ), where it is shown that the imaalat al - alif, the long /aa/ imaala s uch as described by Sibawaih replicates conditioning factors found in such diverse dialects as Andalusian, Eastern Libyan, Maltese and Lebanese. Rather than see the contemporary reflexes of imaala as massive independent parallel development, it was argued that the contemporary cases stand in a direct historical relation to the population of imaala speakers described by Sibawaih. In this section I would like to extend this to another case, namely the affrication of *k, based on Owens (2013 a ). In this case t here are two independent samples to describe. One is Sibawaih. Sibawaih, I have argued, dealt with the *k > č shift in two separate places. One is relatively well known, namely the form of the 2FSG object/possessor suffix, which Sibawaih (II : 322 - 3 ), descr ibed as – ši , - kiš or – kis (besides – ki ). The second place Sibawaih discussed affrication phenomenon is his inventory ( II: 452 - 5) where he sketches a three - tier system of variants, the standard 29 sounds, six sounds sanctioned in poetry and Koranic recitation, and eight sounds which are unsanctioned. Among the inventory of the proscribed sounds are the ‘jiym like a kaaf’ and ‘jiym like a shiyn’. The plethora of jiym - like sounds is explicable if his designations are understood as a shorthand in which the sounded likened to (‘like a’) represents the voicing parameter, the sound itself the place and manner parameters. A ‘jiym like a shiyn’ is therefore a devoiced jiym. Establishing the identity of Sibawaih’s jiym is itself an issue, but assuming that it was /dž/, this would give /č/. Putting two and two together, as it were, from Sibawaih’s two separate treatments (2FSG and non - canonical sounds), it can be concluded that Sibawaih was describing affricated *k > *č

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variants, that is, that the affrication of kaaf was already in place by the late eighth century (Sibawaih 177/789 ). 6 Turning to a contemporary perspective it is striking that an affricated *k is attested across nearly the entire span of the Arabic - speaking world. Three main variants can be disting uished. In the eastern , including parts of , , the Emirates and the FSG suffix is – iš . As both Fischer (1956) and Holes (1991) note, this is probably a separate phenomenon from the generalized affrication of *k, as i t is largely limited to this one . There are two types of *k > *č variants, one conditioned, the other unconditioned. Roughly speaking, conditioned *k > č occurs in the context of front vowels, so that splits of the type (e.g. Baghdadi) čin - it ‘I was” vs. akuun ‘I am’ arise. The conditioning is not always foolproof (e.g. one has abuu - č ‘your .F father’ after back /uu/), but it serves as a general orientation. Conditioned *k > č is attested in Khorasan (Seeger 2002), , Horan and in the Sharqiyya eastern delta area of Egypt (Behnstedt and Woidich 1984: 17). A second *k > č is unconditioned, i.e. all k’s go to č. This is attested in the Kabylie and in Jijel, northern Moroccan (Jebli) dialects and among Jewish speakers in Tlemcen (realiz ation *k > ç; Heath 2002: 139, Vicente 2007: 131, Cantineau 1960: 66). The unconditioned shift is also attested in the eastern ‘b əkuulu’ dialects in rural Palestinian and in some Syrian dialects (Grotzfeld 1980: 174, Behnstedt 1997: 30). The Najdi *k >ts shift is analogous to the conditioned *k > *č. The distribution can be summarized as follows. (4) *k > č or ts  ( - i š: eastern Arabian peninsula (Oman, Yemen)  - (i)č: – Conditioned: Khorasan, eastern Sharqiyya, Iraq (Baghdadi), Horan – Unconditioned: Jijel, Tlemcan, Jebli (N. Morocco), Sukne (Syria), rural West bank – (i)ts: Najdi Clearly there are many instances of affrication of *k in Arabic. A question which can be asked, and colleagues of mine have made such a case to me (p.c.), is that what one is dealing with is not a unitary phenomenon, but rather multiple independent development. The argument here goes

6 For detailedarguments as to why Sibawaih for the 2FSG identified – kiš and – kis , rather than – č and – ts , see Owens 2013a: section 5).

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that affrication of *k is universally common, and therefore is would not be surprising to find it springing up in multiple locations. This point, paralle l independent development, one that is often encountered in question s of historical developments in Arabic (see also 3.3 below) , and in historical linguistics generally (see discussion of Moulton in section 2 above), can be addressed in three ways. First, in principle a single origin is always to be preferred to parallel independent development, since postulating a single innovation, then spread, is simpler than requiring different, independent populations to innovate in exactly the same way. Chance alone f avors a single innovation. This point may be termed the ‘single innovation + dispersal’ explanation. The argument has all the more force in a language like Arabic, where it is known that populations did indeed spread from a relatively central dispersal poi nt in the Middle East. The fact that such ‘single innovation + spread’ events are often discontin uous is discussed in section 4 below. Indeed, in the next section further evidence is adduced showing that there are attestations of discontinuous, shared inno vations which can only be explained by a single innovation plus dispersal. In short, the onus of proof in cases such as this is on those who claim parallel independent development. Further to this point, looking more closely at the distribution of palatal ized *k, the dialect map is even more complicated than that given in ( 4 ). In , conditioned palatalized *k > č is attested not only in the Horan, but also in populations in Kerak (Enam Al - Wer, p. c.) . A strict independent development view would explai n these as independent events. In Syria, Behnstedt’s Sprachatlas ( 1997: 30 - 1 ) shows palatalized *k in various locations. It occurs throughout eastern Syria, but it also occurs in three locations between Hamaa ʔ and Aleppo (sample points 231, 255, 230/212), in one location in Hatay province in Turkey (point (94), and in one location north of Damascus (point 362). The parallel independent development position would hold that each place it occurs, it occurred independently, hence twice in Jordan and seven times in Syria. This reduces by one if the *k > č change in the Horan is considered to be a common innovation which antedates the formation of the national boundary, but this still leaves many independent events. If, on the other hand, it is allowed that in th is region the *k > č populations are related to a common origin, the question of where to draw the line with further shared innovations needs to be addressed. Would one also consider Baghdadi to have innovated independently, , and probably Khora san, so that there are still multiple independent events leading to the same result? Each of these in fact would need to be argued for. Thus, as soon as one thinks through the

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‘palatalization happens all the time’ proposition as it might have played out in the Levantine populations where it is attested today, a shared common origin looks attractive because otherwise one is left to explain why the change just happened to occur among populations which either are continuous or are separated from *k > č dialect s by relatively short distances. Secondly, in the current problem the argument of single innovation + dispersal has added support in the fact that affrication is likely a phenomenon already described in Sibawaih. This would have given ample time for the c hange to have become embedded in populations which then carried them to their present - day attested distributions. It similarly would have given time for some populations to have generalized an initial, conditioned *k > č split into an unconditioned *k > *č as attested in both the eastern and western Arabic - speaking regions. Thirdly, the argument that ‘affrication occurs all the time’ is overly simplistic by any close reading of language history where affrication is attested. A well - studied case in point is Old English . In Old English palatalization of *k, ending ultimately in /č/ (or /š/ in certain contexts , esp. < *sk ) occurred before front vowels /e/, /i/, /æ/, e.g. kin > čin ‘chin’ (cf. modern German Kinn ). This shift is often dated to have begun in the p re - English 7 period, i.e. by the 5 th century, and to have run its course no later than the end of the Old English period (about end of 11 th century, Cercignani 1983: 314, 317 ). For the next thousand years or more , even though English has front and back variants /k/ according to whether it occurs before a front or back vowel ([ k̞̝ iil] ‘keel’ vs. [ ḵuul] ‘cool’) , no palatalization has occurred . The conditioning factors are present, the variation is present, yet there a re no English dialects which ha ve gone from / k̝iil / to */čiil/ = *‘the “keel” of a boat’ ( where * here means ‘unattested’). The English experience with palatalization of *k in fact provides a nice to the argument presented here for Arabic. *k palat alization is argued to have been a productive part of Arabic no l ater than Sibawaih’s era, and most likely was in effect well before this time. 8 It had to have been in effect during the early Arabic - Islamic migrations in order to account for its diasporic distribution . Note, for instance, that in the areas outside of the core Middle East,

7 Pre - English designates an era in history accessible only via reconstruction , before the earliest attested English documents in the seventh century (Moulton 1954: 24). Old English palatalization shares many similarities with the same phenomenon in Frisian. In a recent trea tment of the subject, Laker (2007) argues for a shared palatalization of *k in the two languages, which would have the phenomenon in place by the 5 th century CE, beginning before the earliest Germanic migrations into Britain. Intriguingly, the Old Frisian reflex of palatalized *k is /ts/, hence the English reflex /č/ and the Frisian reflex /ts/ together uncannily mirror the Najdi and non - Najdi /ts/, /č/ reflexes. 8 I.e., my dating of *k palatalization is far earlier than Holes (1991: 666).

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Khorasan, and the Jebli, Tlemcen, Jijel regions the č - speaking populations are either ‘relics’ (Khorasan) or part of the early ‘pre - Hilalian’ migrations (North Africa). Su bsequent to this early era (whose end point is left undated) palatalization would have ceased to exist as a productive phenomenon, except to the extent that it continues to have a dynamic wherever dia lects meet (see e.g. Abdel - Jawad 1981 on a detailed case of /č/ ~ /k/ variation from rural in Amman). In this section it has been argued that important historical linguistic associations can be drawn between contemporary dialects and the descriptions of Sibawaih. What is of particular intere st in the context of the current argument is that the existence of the *k > č shift in pre - diasporic Arabic stands regardless of its attestation in Sibawaih. Indeed, one could imagine a linguistic history in which we had only the phonetic description of Xa lil, who did not describe any sounds beyond the 29 of Classical Arabic (Sara 2013: 524 ). In this case one would simply conclude that there were further varieties of Arabic outside of Xalil’s purview. Having the detailed insights of Sibawaih fortunately add s further dimensions to the richness of language history which can be deduced from Arabic.

3 . 3 . Nuanced associations In section 3.1 linguistic phenomena were discussed which, in detail, can only be treated on the basis of contemporary, oral data. Section 3.2 went in the opposite direction, pointing out that there are phenomena which converge equally from historical and from contemporary information. In this section I will treat a third type of data, one where a case can be made for association between histori ca l l y attested and contemporary phenomenon, but where the association requires interpretive nuance. The example (based on Owens 2013b) pertains to the ‘intrusive - n’ (realized as - n or – nn, according to phonological conditioning). This is a morpheme suffix ed either to a verb or an active participle, in some data sets, exclusively to the AP. In nearly all Arabic varieties where it occurs it occurs only before a pronominal object suffix. In most dialects where it occurs, it occurs only with an AP and again, i n some dialects where it occurs, if an object suffix occurs, the intrusive – n must be added. (5) intrusive - n Yemen, Dathiina (Landberg 1909: 720)

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me ħaalif - ínn - ak (allied - N - you - M) “[he is] your ally” Nigerian, Bagirmi kaatb - in - ha written - N - it.F ‘he has wr itten it’ Other dialects where – n occurs only with the AP include , Khorasan (Seeger 2002: 635), and it was reported in eastern Syrian by Wetzstein (1868: 192), though not from contemporary data in this case. In addition, a complicated case of reint erpretation of the – n + object suffix to – n + subject suffix is attested in Uzbekistan Arabic (see Fischer 1961, Retsö 1988, Zimmermann 2009 for details). In Oman Holes (2011) and Eades (2008) report the – n + object suffix on finite verbs. 9 (6) yi - kaffi - n - na 3 - enough - N - us “it will be enough for us” It is argued that this intrusive – n is cognate with the so - called al - nuwn al - ϴaqiyla ‘heavy – n’ (= ‘T’ in glosses) , customarily termed the ‘energetic or energic ’ in the western tradition. The form is described i n detail by Sibawaih (II: 403 ff.). (7) wa - llaah - ila - a - f ʕal - anna by God - GEN EM - I - do - T “By God I will do [it]” (II : 403.18) In Owens (2013 b ) the formal similarity between the two is noted , as well as the fact that both - n’s ar e suffixed to verbal predicates. In addition a corpus examination of the energic – n in the Qur ʔan (2013 b : 231)reveals that there is a far greater than chance probability that in the Qur ʔan the – n occurs with an object pronoun than without one, as in ( 8 ), where – kum is suffixed to – anna - . ( 8) fa - immaa ya - ʔtiy - anna - kum min - niy hud - an (Q 2:38) a nd - when 3 - come - T - you. MPL from - me guidance - ACC “And when guidance comes to you from Me”

9 A form perhaps also present in southern Tihama Arabic, al - Qahtani 2015: 59.

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As Testen (1993) noted, the ‘energic’ – n of the classical language is cognate with – n’s throughout Semitic, and by association, so too is the intrusive – n of contemporary dialects. 10 It has been assumed, e.g. Hasselbach (2006: 324) that dialectal – n is a parallel independent development. 11 This is unlikely for two reasons. First, looking only at contemporary internal Arabic sources, there is a near identity of form and distribution of – n across all dialects where it occurs, namely, before an object pronoun suffix, and in most dialects, only with the active participle. Linking this to the discussi on in 3.1 above, it makes historical linguistic sense to see the usage in Bagirmi Arabic in NE Nigeria (eastern part, bordering on Cameroon) linked to the early migrations out of the Gulf region, into Upper Egypt and on into the Lake Chad area. Both lingui stic common sense and what we know of the history of Arabs in the Lake Chad area dovetail to support the idea of a common origin. In this case, it is hard to see how the simple innovation + dispersal model is not the correct explanation. The second step in the argument is to relate the contemporary Arabic usage to other varieties/languages. The to the classical energic is an interpretive one, though plausible both in terms of form and distribution. Among other Semitic languages cognation is easier t o discern , where, as in the Arabic dialects, the intrusive – n surfaces only before an object suffix, e.g. neo - western Aramaic subjunctive (Arnold 1990 : y - ṭuʕn - enn - ax ‘he carries you.M’) and in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (ca. 7 th century CE) y - qdm - in - k ‘he precedes you (SG)’ , (Dalman 1905: 360). The intrusive – n, as interpreted here, thus presents a case of interesting resilience, of a morpheme which can take on different semantic values in different languages and varieties, but which derives ultimately from a common source.

3 . 4 . Innovations As a final position on a preliminary taxonomy of historical linguistic outcomes it is clear that contemporary Arabic often undergoes innovations of various kinds. The very idea of ‘dialect’ implies a differentiating history. In the case of Arabic, differences are either pre - diasporic or post - diasporic . The usual interpretation, as seen above with Brockelmann/ Bergsträsser , is that differences arise in the post - Islamic era. This position,

10 See Owens (2013b) for historical reconstruction of – n in West Semitic. 11 As noted above, an assumption of parallel independent development is not, as many Arabicists and Semiticists often assu me, an unmarked case. To the contrary, the assumption needs to be argued for on a case by case basis, particularly, as Hetzron (1976) would have argued, in instances such as the current one, where there is such a close formal similarity between the classic al and dialectal realizations of – n.

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however, is easily contradicted, as sec tions 3.1 - 3 have shown. One element differentiating the Bagirmi dialect of Nigerian Arabic from most other dialects is the presence of an intrusive – n, and this, it was seen, is undoubtedly a pre - diasporic element. By the same token, post - diaspora d evelopm ents abound. One example suffices, one already introduced in ( 1 ) above. There it was seen that western Sudanic Arabic is characterized by the conditioned development, - t (1SG/2MSG) > Ø . This is an innovation which clearly sets o f f WSA from the rest of the A rabic - speaking world. It is the fate of Arabic dialects that they rest between innovation of new elements and maintenance of old. Bagirmi Arabic, at one and the same time, maintains old elements in unique ways (3.3) , and innovates uniquely in others. From this perspective the very idea of Old vs. Neo - Arabic is misplaced. This contrast essentializes what, from an historical linguistic perspective, cannot be essentialized. It essentializes in its insistence on contrasting complete entities, ‘languages’ one w ith another. The reality is that historical linguistics is a ‘bottom - up’ discipline. Historical linguistic entities are defined against shared innovations. When, indeed, very large numbers of shared innovations can be identified, one can transition from on e language to another. However, when the relevant entities, contemporary dialects in this case, sometimes innovate, and sometimes do not, defining dichotomous categories may serve cultural and political purposes – cf. Ibn Faris’ marginalization of certain variant forms – but it does only a disservice to a linguistic understanding of the language. The following brief example exemplifies the point made in the previous paragraph that different grammatical features may have very independent linguistic trajecto ries, another of the factors challenging a linear interpretation of language history. In section 3.1 it was seen that there is a high degree of stability in the pragmatic factors governing the expression of subject as an overt nominal (noun or pronoun) or as null across widely separated dialects. With the conditioned change *t > Ø as in (1), the possibility can be entertained that there would be a higher degree of overt subject marking to compensate for the loss of the overt inflection on the verb. This, ho wever, is not the case. For instance, the extremely low frequency of the overt 2MSG subject pronoun, inta – occurring with only about 14% of all 2SG verbs in the sample - is maintained whether the verb is or is not marked overtly by – t , gul ‘you said’ ~ gul - t - a ‘you said it’. In fact, in the sample used none of the ten tokens of2MSG Ø - form perfects (like gul ‘you said’) have overt pronoun subjects. While in matters such as this other factors need ultimately to be taken into

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account, a preliminary look app ears to confirm that what is, essentially, a phonologically motivated cause of a more complex morpho - , does not interact with the discourse factors summarized in 3.1 to influence the expression of subject. The factors described in 3.1 are independ ent of the morphological expression of the 1/2MSG perfect verb suffix.

4 . Arabic historical linguistics and related sub - disciplines In this section I would briefly like to remark on the relation between Arabic historic al linguistics and dialectology and sociolinguistic studies. 12 As Al - Wer (2013: 251 ) has emphasized for sociolinguistics, a good dialectology is a necessary precursor to any Arabic historical linguistics. As has been illustrated in section 3, there in a sense cannot be an Arabic historical li nguistics without an account of the dialects, or perhaps better put, one goal of Arabic history is to explain how the contemporary dialects came to be as they are, which implies historical treatment. Against this background, however, Arabic dialectology ha s tended to eschew historical treatment. In the best case, this is an instance of benign neglect. Good dialectology requires great investment of time, and often there is little of this commodity left after a thorough dialectological study. One can suspect, however, that much of the dialectological tradition has grown up in the shadow of what might be termed the Fergusonian/Fückian model. I name this after two scholars who , in the manner of Brockelmann and Bergsträsser, saw a more or less linear relationship from the Classical language to the dialects. Ferguson in particular, as seen above, derived the dialects from CA. Fück (1950 ) had a slightly more nuanced interpretation, with Classical Arabic itself arising as a koine. Nonetheless, he did not see a role f or the contemporary dialects in understanding Arabic language history. Both perspectives are ultimately in the tradition of understanding the contemporary dialects to be not only (and trivially) chronological successors of Classical Arabic, but comparative linguistic ones as well. What can be said about the importance of integrating historical thinking into dialectology (or vice versa) can equally be said about sociolinguistics. This is relevant from two perspectives. First, the contemporary world is witnes sing unprecedented degrees of , not only

12 Leaving out completely the important, though very large question of contact and historical linguistics. This encompasses both contact between dialects and between Arabic and other languages. It will equally be interest ing to ascertain how the growing corpus of epigraphic material bears on the interpretation of Arabic language history (e.g. al - Jallad 2015, al - Jallad and Manaser 2015).

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in the traditional urban melting pots, but increasingly through inter - medial contact. In healthy reaction to this, increasingly language and dialect contact is being studied through the corpus and qu antitative filter of sociolinguistics. Indeed, one of the early studies in Arabic sociolinguistics, Abdel Jawad (1981), documented the regression of the rural Palestinian *k > č reflex (ultimately, of the ‘b əkuul’ complex of dialects) among immigrants in A mman. The micro study of language change implies sociolinguistic methodology. An arguably more significant application of sociolinguistic thinking pertains to the conceptualization of dialects themselves. Whereas traditionally dialectology deals with ling uistic forms as represented in (see Behnstedt and Woidich 2005), sociolinguistics has as its basis speech communities. Labov (2007) operationalized this concept in drawing a distinction between the opposed effects of change via transmission and change via diffusion. The former is characterized by small, incremental changes, and is supported by a relatively closed, interconnected speech community, 13 whereas the latter is characterized by larger, sometimes more irregular changes, and occurs where communities are in open contact with one another. The importance of this perspective, beyond the potentially interesting sociolinguistic typology which might arise from it, is that it embeds the study of language change in populations of speakers. Given this a dialectal interpretation, dialects can themselves be conceptualized as speech communities. 14 In this context it does have to be said that Arabic linguisti cs has far to go before a socio - historical linguistics can be operationalized in a methodologically adequate manner (see n. 14). However, the importance of such a perspective is not only linguistic, but particularly in an Arabic context, socio - political. A s seen with Ibn Faris, what traditionally counts as Arabic is anything but a dialect. From a purely linguistic perspective, however, marginalizing the very entity which is at the core of contemporary Arabic precludes an historical linguistics right from th e onset. Recognizing their status as communities of speakers potentially puts a human and

13 “The transmission of linguistic change within a speech community is characterized by incrementation within a faithfully reproduced pattern characteristic of the family …” (Labov2007: 344. 14 Magidow’s ‘language community’ approach to historical linguistics is a similar idea and one worth developing. In Magidow (2013) it is not alwa ys clear where a traditional historical approach based on reconstruction, as advocated here, is enhanced by a circular socio - historical linguistics of the varieties he treats. As a practical, but crucial matter, as can be deduced from Labov (2007), the amo unt of realistic sociolinguistic data needed to explore a speech communities approach even in as well - studied a language as English, dealing with, compared to Arabic, a relatively short time frame (240 years in the case of Labov’s study), is immense. How c onfounding Arabic linguistic variation can be when measured against and correlated with language attitudes, social norms and networks is illustrated in Owens (1998a, chapters 9, 12).What I emphasize here is not only the idea that dialects imply speakers wi th variegated sociolinguistic attributes, but also that the varieties they speak can be conceptualized as emblematic of who they are.

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social face on them, which is less easy to ignore than mere dialects. Furthermore, conceptualizing Arabic dialects in this way I believe would make more palatable cer tain historical linguistic constructs which have been advocated here. In particular, the idea of independent parallel development, discussed in sections 3.2 and 3.3 above, is often adduced as an alternative to single innovation + dispersal . How can it be, one might ask, that there are so many dialectal instances of *k > č? Though circular, a plausible answer is that these changes were introduced in a relatively small area, in a relatively small, closely connected community of speakers, which gradually expan ded, and began splitting and migrating. Once the change was established, the *k > č becomes an inherited /č/ for successor generations, and once embedded in speech communities it will be continued. An example on a more global scale is provided in section 3 .1. Labov’s emphasis on the sensitivity of linguistic form to a community of transmitters implies a socio - historical perspective, with appropriate sociolinguistic constructs.

5 . Conclusion: A comprehensive Arabic historical linguistics The question of the st atus of contemporary dialects in my view goes to the very heart of Arabic historical linguistics. By and large – there are notable exceptions as with Vollers 1906 – the Arabic dialects have had no status as an historically legitimate object. This results a s much from the language ideologies that have evolved around what Arabic is, ideologies which in part go back the Arabic grammarians themselves as seen above, as it does from actual comparative linguistic analysis. The mere fact that there are aspects of h istorical linguistics which can only be studied on the basis of the spoken language, for instance as described in 3.1 above, already constitutes a strong argument against marginalizing native spoken Arabic from the purview of Arabic language history. By th e same token, a central role of the contemporary dialects in linguistic history necessarily implies the basic standards of historical linguistic analysis – the comparative method and attendant postulation of proto forms, the role of contact, and so on. Her e Magidow ( 2013: 425) misses the point when he asks : “ it is not clear exactly what is gained by referring to Proto - Arabic. ”A proto language is the logical product of reconstruction based on the comparative method. 15 Whether one is evaluating the relation bet ween different languages, or the

15 Certainly there is always room for making finer distinctions. The immediate predecessor to English is often termed ‘pre - English’, though it is clearly a variety inferred via reconstruction from other West in general, and Frisian in particular. The role of the influence of cultural scholarly traditions most certainly plays a role

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relation between dialectal variants separated, in the case of Arabic, by periods of time comparable to the postulated period of Proto - West Germanic or Proto - Slavic, unless one recognizes the comparative method as a basic to ol of the trade, one is not doing historical linguistics, and the comparative method by definition has a proto - variety as its goal. By the same token, as Moulton (1954, see section 2) implies, the inquiry never stops there, and clearly Arabic, along with t he Semitic languages in general provide perhaps overly - fertile ground for exploring the many facets of historical linguistics. In this paper I have argued that one entity needed to understand Arabic language history are the contemporary dialects, and that a basic tool for understanding this history is the comparative method. Proceeding along these lines, a typology of four types of outcomes was developed which illustrate the variegated results an application of the method yields. As far as the methodology goes, three points can be emphasized. First, the method works from the ground up. What one reconstructs in the first instance are individual features which, by their very linguistic nature, will be prone to have quite different histories. The miraculous pa radigm (section 3.1) is a morpho - discourse paradigm of unexpected stability which has an historical trajectory independent of the other features discussed here, *k > č, intrusive * - n, *t > Ø (sections 3.2 - 3.4). Arabic like few other languages in the world is one where potential internal historical dependencies can be observed, but bundling them together requires a treatment of individual features and changes. Secondly, the comparative method can be confounded by two other factors, contact, not discussed her e, and independent parallel development, discussed extensively in section 3.3. As a third point, one which distinguishes Arabic against almost all languages of the world, ideally the method links up with the rich classical tradition, the two sources comple menting one another, as illustrated in section 3.3. One does not know in advance how far the comparative method goes in elucidating Arabic language history, and in section 3.1 it was suggested that with the increasing availability of spoken corpora, new di mensions for understanding will be opened up. Interestingly, this inquiry imparts a status to varieties traditionally marginalized in both the Arabic and western historical study of Arabic.

in the constructs, terms a nd entities which one postulates, so that one and the same methodology can lead to nominally different products

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