Phonological Variation and Change in Mesopotamiaː

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Phonological Variation and Change in Mesopotamiaː Phonological variation and change in Mesopotamiaː A study of accent levelling in the Arabic dialect of Mosul. Abdulkareem Yaseen Ahmed Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Linguistics) School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences Newcastle University October 2018 Dedication To My Heart, soul & life Hussein, Yaseen & Yousif Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors Dr Ghada Khattab and Dr Damien Hall for their continuous support of my PhD study and related research, for their patience, honesty and immense knowledge. Their guidance over the last few years helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. I would like to thank the following people for their kind support and help throughout my study: Dr Jalal Al-Tamimi and Dr Danielle Turton for their very helpful comments and suggestions on various things of the study. I would also like to thank Daniel Ezra Johnson for his support in conducting the statistics in this study. My sincere thanks to my colleague Maha Jasim who helped in many things especially checking the segmentation of the data. Very special ‘Merci’ goes to Maelle Amand for her immense help. I would also to thank all the people of Mosul and others who helped in various capacities in this study, particularly Ahmed Salama, Khalid Ibrahim Alahmed and Ekhlas Muhsin and Dhiaa Kareem. An everlasting ‘Thank You’ goes to Rosalie Maggio, Janet Atwill and Annabelle Lukin. I would also like to acknowledge the support of HCED (Iraq) for sponsoring my studies, without which this work would not have been possible. Without the precious support of the people above, it would not be possible to conduct this research. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family for their immense help, patience and care throughout this journey. Declaration The material presented in this thesis is the original work of the candidate except as otherwise acknowledged. It has not been submitted previously in part or in whole, for any award at any university, at any other time. Some early material of this thesis has already been published by the author in the form of three articles in three different journals. These run as follows: Yaseen, A. (2015a) ‘Accent levelling and maintenance in Maṣlā wi Arabic: A preliminary investigation’, Annual Review of Education, Communication and Language Sciences (ARECLS), 21, pp. 1-23. Yaseen, A. (2015b) ‘Qaf in Mosul Arabic: Levelling or resistance? ‘, Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics, 21.2, pp. 64-80. Yaseen, A. (2015c) ‘Dialect loss and vitality in Mosul, Iraq: A postscript’, Humanities and Social Sciences Review, 5(2), pp. 453-472. Table of Contents Contents Dedication ................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 3 Declaration.................................................................................................................................. 4 Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ I List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... VI List of Tables ......................................................................................................................... VIII List of Maps .............................................................................................................................. IX Transcription and Transliteration .............................................................................................. X List of Abbreviations .............................................................................................................. XII Abstract .................................................................................................................................. XIII Chapter Oneː Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Research aims and questions of the present study ............................................................ 3 1.3 Why this study? ................................................................................................................ 4 1.3.1 Research gaps ............................................................................................................. 4 1.3.2 Other lines of contribution ......................................................................................... 6 Chapter Twoː Iraq ..................................................................................................................... 10 2.1 Iraq: An introduction ...................................................................................................... 10 2.2 Religions and ethnicities ................................................................................................. 11 2.3 A linguistic profile of Iraq .............................................................................................. 12 2.3.1 Iraqi Arabic .............................................................................................................. 17 2.3.2 Overview of the literature on Iraqi Arabic ............................................................... 18 2.3.3 An outline of the phonology of IA ........................................................................... 19 Chapter Three: Dialect landscape of Iraq ................................................................................. 30 3.1 Qeltu and gelet dichotomy .............................................................................................. 30 I 3.1.1 Gelet ......................................................................................................................... 31 3.1.2 Qeltu ......................................................................................................................... 36 3.2 Ecological classifications ................................................................................................ 42 3.3. Geographical and intra-ethnic classifications ................................................................ 43 Chapter Four: Mosul and its dialect in focus ............................................................................ 45 4.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 45 4.2 A brief overview of Mosul’s history ............................................................................... 46 4.3 A linguistic profile of Mosul .......................................................................................... 48 4.3.1 Maṣlā wi Arabic ........................................................................................................ 48 4.3.2 Previous treatments on MA ...................................................................................... 49 4.3.3 Phonology of Maṣlā wi Arabic.................................................................................. 50 4.3.4 Key characteristics of Maṣlā wi Arabic .................................................................... 53 Chapter Fiveː Key concepts ...................................................................................................... 55 5.1 Variation and change ...................................................................................................... 55 5.2 Dialect levelling .............................................................................................................. 56 5.2.1 Definitions and trends .............................................................................................. 57 5.2.2 General factors promoting levelling ......................................................................... 59 5.2.3 An overview of the previous literature on levelling ................................................. 62 5.2.4 Studies of levelling in Arabic dialects...................................................................... 63 5.3 Levelling in Iraq .............................................................................................................. 64 5.4 Levelling in Maṣlā wi Arabic .......................................................................................... 65 5.5 Reasons why we might expect levelling in Mosul ......................................................... 67 5.5.1 Sociopsychological factors ....................................................................................... 67 5.5.2 Sociopolitical factors ................................................................................................ 68 5.6 Bedouinisation ................................................................................................................ 69 5.7 Koineisation .................................................................................................................... 72 Chapter Six: Methodology ....................................................................................................... 77 6.1
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