Saudi Arabian Dialects Library of Arabic Linguistics

Library of Arabic Linguistics The reasons behind the establishment' of this Series on Arabic linguistics are manifold. First: Arabic linguistics is developing into an increasingly interesting and important subject within the broad field of modern linguistic studies. The subject is now fully recognised in the Universities of the Arabic speaking world and in international linguistic circles, as a subject of great theoretical and descriptive interest and importance. Second: Arabic linguistics is reaching a mature stage in its development benefiting both from early Arabic linguistic scholarship and modern techniques of general linguistics and related disciplines. Third: The scope of this discipline is wide and varied, covering diverse areas such as Arabic phonetics, phonology and grammar, Arabic psycho linguistics, Arabic dialectology, Arabic lexicography and lexicology, Arabic sociolinguistics, the teaching and learning of Arabic as a first, second, or foreign language, communications, semiotics, terminology, translation, machine translation, Arabic computational linguistics, history of Arabic linguistics, etc. Viewed against this background, Arabic linguists may be defined as: the scientific investigation and study of the Arabic language in all its aspects. This embraces the descriptive, comparative and historical aspects of the language. It also concerns itself with the classical form as well as the Modern and contemporary standard forms and their dialects. Moreover, it attempts to study the language in the appropriate regional, social and cultural settings. It is hoped that the Series will devote itself to all issues of Arabic linguistics in all its manifestations on both the theoretical and applied levels. The results of these studies will also be of use in the field of linguistics in general, as well as related subjects. Although a number of works have appeared independently or within series" yet there is no platform designed specifically for this subject. This Series is being started to fill this gap in the linguistic field. It will be devoted to Monographs written in either English or Arabic, or both, for the benefit of wider circles of readership. Library of Arabic Linguistics All these reasons justify the establishment of a new forum which is devoted to all areas of Arabic linguistic studies. It is also hoped that this Series will be of interest not only to students and researchers in Arabic linguistics but also to students and scholars of other disciplines who are looking for infor mation of theoreti~al, practical or pragmatic interest. The Series Editors ii Saudi Arabian Dialects Library of Arabic Linguistics Series editors Muhammad Hasan Bakalla King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Bruce Ingham School of Oriental and African Studies, University ofLondon Advisory editorial board Peter F. Abboud University ofTexas at Austin M.H. Abdulaziz University ofNairobi Yousif El-Khalifa Abu Bakr University of Khartoum Salih J. Altoma Indiana University Arne Ambros University ofVienna El Said M. Badawi American University in Cairo Michael G. Carter University of Sydney Ahmad al-Dhubaib King Saud University (formerly University of Riyadh) Martin Forstner Johannes Gutenberg University at Mainz Otto Jastrow University of Erlangen-Nurnberg Raja T. Nasr University College of Beirut C.H.M. Versteegh Catholic University at Nijmegen Bougslaw R. Zagorski University ofWarsaw iv Theodore Prochazka Jr Saudi Arabian Dialects Monograph NO.8 ~l Routledge ~ ~ Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published in 1988 by Kegan Paul International This edition first published in 20 I 0 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX 14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Theodore Prochazka Ir 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 10: 0-7103-0204-5 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-7103-0204-5 (hbk) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. The publisher has made every effort to contact original copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace. For Helen Editor's Note It is now almost fifty years since Jean Cantineau produced his i~portant description of a number of dialects of the Syrian desert, "Etudes sur quelques parlers de nomades arabes orientales". In this he was able to use data obtained in the northern desert to project back into the Arabian peninsula and make a historical statement of the way in which these dialects had resulted from a succession of emigrations over a period of perhaps seven hundred years, bringing with them the results of a continuous process of linguistic change taking place within the peninsula. Cantineau was not alone in treating these northern dialects. Landberg had described the dialect of the cAnizah tribes in 1919 and 1920; Wetzstein also had worked on bedouin tribal dialects in 1868; and Montagne worked on material from the Jazrra Shammar in 1935. Cantineau, however, was the first to make statements about the interrelation of the individual dialects to each other. The dialects of southern Arabia were well covered by Landberg for the Hadhramo~t and Dathina (1901, 1905, 1909 and 1913), and Rhodokanakis for Zufar (1908-11), and Jayakar for Oman (1889), but this still left central Arabia, e.g; the districts of Sudair, al-cAri9h, Qa~im and Jabal Shammar, very thinly covered. Since then T.M. Johnstone produced a number of works which helped to elucidate the geographical distribution of various sound changes within the Arabian peninsula, in particular his work on the Gulf dialects (1963, 1965 and 1967), on the dialect of cUnaiza (1967) and on a dialect of the south central Najdi type (1962 and 1964). More recently work on the dialects of the peninsula has con tinued with Abboud on the dialect of Hail (1964, 1979) and MajmaCa (1978); Prochazka (1981), al-Tajir (1982) and Holes (1980) on the dialects of Bahrain. A1-Sasi (1971) and Scnreiber (1971) have pub lished on the dialect of Mecca. The writer also has worked on the dialect of Mecca (1971), the dialects of the northeastern area bordering on Iraq (1982), and on the dialect of the Mu~air (1979) and phafir (1982) bedouins. The present work by Prochazka is the first general survey of the dialects of Saudi Arabia covering a wide range from north to south ix in one volume, and as such is an important contribution to the recording of linguistic variation in that vast region. It is particularly strong in covering a number of localities in the southwest not attested in previous work, and it is the first lin guistic study of the dialect of the Ruwala bedouin of the northern desert. It follows in spirit and in form the work of Cantineau, presenting the material within a morphological framework, listing reflexes of the earlier common Arabic form. The work reveals a major division into two areal blocks: (i) the southern ~ijaz and Tihamah and (ii) the Najdi and Eastern Arabian dialects. Interestingly this corresponds to the older cultural division into Greater Yemen (stretching up to just south of Mecca in the region of the Hudhail tribe) and Najd (including all of Central Arabia except the coastal region). The north Arabian area represented in Prochazka's material by the Hail and Ruwaili dialects shows a northward expansion of the Najdi type. It is also note worthy that the dialect of Bisha. and Najran, though within the old area of Greater Yemen, are Najdi in character. Rabin, in his clas sic study of pre-Islamic dialects, Ancient West Arabian (1951. p.25), states: The little we know of the Northern Yemenite dialects rather tends to suggest that there was a continuous chain of dialects from south to north without any clear dividing line between Yemen and Hijaz. On this basis it would seem that the Najdi linguistic area has expanded southward into the area of Bisha and Najran, probably since the beginning of the Islamic era, corresponding to the diminution of the political and trade importance of the Yemen region. The dialect of Hail and Jabal Shammar, as revealed by Prochazka's material and that of earlier writers such as Abboud and Montagne, both in its geographical position and in some of its linguistic characteristics, reflects the dialect of the ancient Tayyi C tribe. Rabin mentions certain features common to the old Tayyi C dialect and that of the Jabal Shammar today, including the preservation of the -t of the feminine suffix in nouns, the dropping of the -t of the feminine plural ending -at, and the occurrence of the form -ah for the 3rd f.s. objective suffix. He also mentions that at an earlier time before the Islamic period, it is likely that the Tayyi C were culturally and linguistically more important and perhaps controlled the Syrian desert area up to the settled lands. This again reflects what Cantineau has suggested for the Shammar in the seventeenth century. This type of study of linguistic variation seems to point

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