The Linguistic History of Arabic
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A Linguistic History of Arabic JONATHAN OWENS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS S 135545 OXJORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6dp Acknowledgements and Dedication Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York The challenge of developing a critical, coherent interpretation of Arabic Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi linguistic history first confronted me when I began teaching a three-semester Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto course on the subject at Bayreuth University, a course which through the With offices in (I would like to imagine) enthusiastic participation of students constantly Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece presented new issues and perspectives. Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore A number of individuals contributed to the working and reworking of this South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam book. Two anonymous readers provided stimulating criticism to the entire Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries work, while Orin Gensler set out various challenging objections to Ch. 4, and Published in the United States for Ch. 6 Janet Watson gave helpful and pertinent criticisms and suggestions by Oxford University Press Inc., New York for new solutions. I would like especially to acknowledge the contribution of © Jonathan Owens 2006 my colleague Pierre Larcher for the incisive critical insights he has provided in The moral rights of the author have been asserted innumerable discussions, beginning many years ago in Benghazi. Database right Oxford University Press (maker) The research on Nigerian Arabic, cited frequently in this book, has been First published 2006 supported for many years through the generosity of the Deutsche Forschungs- All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced stored ma retrieval system, or gemeinschaft (German Research Council). In Nigeria, Dr Jidda Hassan of transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press Maiduguri University provided many native insights into his language, while or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. the university administration has generously supported and encouraged my Enquiries concerning reproductln outside he scope of the above should be sent ,0 the Rights continuing work there. Oxford Department, University Press, at the address above Not least I would like to acknowledge the invaluable support given me at You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover the computer center as and you must impose the Bayreuth University over many years by Klaus Wolf of same condition on any acquirer British Library well as Dr Brigitte John for providing me with map templates. Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available The correspondence with John Davey of OUP was prompt, invigorating, Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data critical, and encouraging. Data available Finally I would like to thank the publishers Harrassowitz Verlag for allowing Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India me to reproduce portions of 'Al-Idghaam al-Kabiyr and the History of Printed in Great Britain (eds.) Sprich on acid-free paper by Arabic', which appeared in W Arnold and Bobzin, H. (2002). Biddies Ltd., King's Lynn ISBN Knechten Aramaisch, wir verstehen es. Festschrift for Otto 0-19-929082-2 978-0-19-929082-6 doch mit deinen University Press for 13579 10 8642 Jastrow (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz), 503-20, the Oxford large portions of 'Case and Proto-Arabic', Bulletin of *<*!»? allowing reproduction of , ^OOC-tCi^ the School of Oriental and African Studies 61: 51-73 and 217-27, as well as John Benjamins for allowing reprint from Diachronica 22 of parts of the article \ SAV 'Pre-Diaspora Arabic: Dialects, Statistics and Historical Reconstruction'. "J ^vWsl* I dedicate the book to the memory of my brother Christopher. Contents Abbreviations and Symbols x Maps xi 1. Introduction: A Language and Its Secrets 1 1.1. Proto-Arabic, Basic Terms 2 1.2. The Early Sources 5 1.3. The Role of the Modern Dialects in Interpreting Arabic Language History 8 1.4. Scope of Work 13 1.5. Language Change and Language Transmission 15 1.6. A Critical Look at Some Truisms in Arabic Historical Linguistics 20 1.7. Summary of Chapters 30 2. Old Arabic, Neo-Arabic and Comparative Linguistics 34 2.1. A Method vs. a Logical Matrix 34 2.2. Stages in Arabic 38 2.3. Arabic and the Dialects 43 2.4. Neo-Arabic and the Neo-German school 47 2.5. The Past is the Present: A Modern Logical Matrix 74 2.6. The Arabic Tradition 75 2.7. Conclusion 77 3. Case and Proto-Arabic 79 3.1. Introduction 80 3.2. Case in the Afroasiatic Phylum 80 3.3. Classical Arabic 85 3.4. The Modern Dialects 101 3.5. Case and Caseless Arabic 114 4. Al-Idgham al-Kabiyr and Case Endings 119 4.1. Sharh Tayyibat al-Nashr: A Fifteenth-Century Treatise on Koranic Variants 123 4.2. Linguistic Attributes of 'Major Assimilation' 125 4.3. Interpretive Summary 129 viii Contents Contents IX 5. Pre-Diasporic Arabic in the Diaspora: A Statistical Approach to Appendix 1. List and short summary of dialects included in study 271 Arabic Language History 137 Appendix 2. List offeatures used in comparison, Chapter 5, with 5.1. Introduction 137 brief exemplification 276 5.2. Dialects, Procedure, Initial Results 142 Appendix 3. Imala in Zamaxshari 281 Statistical Appendix 4. Table used in reconstructions 5.3. Results and their Meaning 151 of suffix pronouns Interpretations in Chapter 8 5.4. 157 283 5.5- The Interpretation of Arabic Linguistic History 166 References 285 5.6. Statistics, Reconstruction, Hypothesis Testing 168 Index 301 5.7. Three Caveats 172 5.8. Problems in Coding 173 6. Nigerian Arabic and Reconstruction of the Imperfect Verb 184 6.1. The Basic Imperfect Verb 184 6.2. Historical Significance 189 6.3. Epenthesis 193 6.4. The Old Arabic Evidence 194 6.5. The Reconstructions and the Classical Arabic Verbal Mode Endings 195 7. Imala 197 7.1. Imala in Old Arabic 197 7.2. Imala in the Modern Dialects 212 7-3- Reconstruction 220 8. Suffix Pronouns and Reconstruction 230 8.1. Pausal and Context Forms and Case Endings 230 8.2. Suffix Pronouns and Case Endings 234 8.3. Pronominal Suffixes, Case Endings and Epenthetic Vowels in Dialects 235 8.4- Syllable Structure 237 8.5. A Data Survey 237 8 6. ^problematic Cases, Some Easy Generalizations 239 8.7. More Difficult Cases 8.8. Case Traces? 245 255 8.9- Harris Birkeland and Old Arabic Object Pronoun Reconstruction 259 9- Summary and Epilogue 266 9.1. Reconstruction and Continuity with Old Arabic 9-2. fcpilogue 266 267 Abbreviations and Symbols Maps Pre-diasporic reconstructed form 1. Sample points, Middle Eastern dialects 139 Proto-Arabic form Word boundary 2. North African sample points 140 Variant forms 3. Western Sudanic Arabic 141 i First person 4. Reconstruction based on modern dialects of pre-diasporic *-in in 2 Second person participal forms 162 3 Third person ABS Absolutive ACC Accusative C Consonant CA Classical Arabic CB Christian Baghdadi ELA Eastern Libyan Arabic F Feminine G Guttural consonant GEN Genitive H Short high vowel, [i] or [u] IN Intrusive 'in' suffix in participal constructions IND Indicative JB Jewish Baghdadi M Masculine MB Muslim Baghdadi N Noun NA Neo-Arabic NOM Nominative OA Old Arabic PL Plural Q QurPaan; Koranic citation SA Standard Arabic SG Singular V Vowel WSA Western Sudanic Arabic 1 Introduction: A Language and Its Secrets Arabic has always been a puzzle to those who delve into its intricacies. A good number of medieval Arabic grammar studies include the word 'secret' or 'secrets' in their title, that of the twelfth-century grammarian Al-Anbari, for instance, PAsraar al-SArabiyya, 'The Secrets of Arabic', or Ibn Jinni's (d. 1002), Sirr SinaaSat al-PSraab, 'The Secret of the Craft of Grammar (or Inflection)'. Others unlock its secrets, such as Sakkaki's Miftaah al-SUluwrn, 'The Key to the Sciences', and some, like the early tenth-century grammarian Ibn Al-Sarraj's Al-Usuwlfiy l-Nahw, 'The Foundations of Gram- mar' describe the core of the language. Secrets abound no less so today than 1,000 years ago when Ibn Al-Sarraj was active. Indeed, as the modern linguis- tic sciences expand, so too do the questions contemporary scholars ask of the language. It is a source of endless fascination, however, that many issues which press on us today were equally addressed by the founders and early practitioners of Arabic grammar as well. Through their genius arose a core of linguistic thinking which was, in its theoretical underpinnings, significant in its own right, but which also produced a descriptive corpus of great detail. This corpus entices with its own secrets, one of which I seek to look into in this book. One key in this instance comes from the nineteenth century in the form of the comparative method, the secret, the form of Arabic spoken during and before the Arabic-Islamic diaspora of the early Islamic era. To unravel it, it is not only the early sources of Arabic, or Old Arabic as I term the collective early sources, which are relevant, but also the vast fabric of contemporary spoken Arabic, the Arabic dialects which have a central role to play. Bringing the two sources together in a cooperative, rather than dichotomous, antag- onistic fashion, as has been a tradition in Western Arabic studies, yields new insights into the history of Arabic.