The Provenance of Arabic Loan-Words in a Phonological and Semantic Study. Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosoph
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1 The Provenance of Arabic Loan-words Hausa:in a Phonological and Semantic study. Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the UNIVERSITY OF LONDON by Mohamed Helal Ahmed Sheref El-Shazly Volume One July 1987 /" 3ISL. \ Li/NDi V ProQuest Number: 10673184 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10673184 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 VOOUMEONE 3 ABSTRACT This thesis consists of an Introduction, three Chapters, and an Appendix. The corpus was obtained from the published dictionaries of Hausa together with additional material I gathered during a research visit to Northern Nigeria. A thorough examination of Hausa dictionaries yielded a large number of words of Arabic origin. The authors had not recognized all of these, and it was in no way their purpose to indicate whether the loan was direct or indirect; the dictionaries do not always give the Arabic origin, and sometimes their indications are inaccurate. The whole of my corpus amounts to some 4000 words, which are presented as an appendix. The entries show the tones and vowel lengths of the words, which do not appear in Hausa orthography, but are in general related to the syllable structure of their Arabic origins. The Arabic items are given in transliteration. Meanings and examples are given for the Hausa items, and for the corresponding Arabic items as fully as is deemed relevant. Items have not always come directly from Arabic, and wherever possible their most likely source has been indicated. A large part of the research was given to this part of the work, and it has been thought desirable to present this corpus in full as a necessary part of the thesis, without which the rest would be much less intelligible. Chapter 1, concerning the historical side suggests that the amount of influence in Northern Nigeria direct from Arabs is much less than has been alleged, and is far exceeded by that of Kanuri, Tuareg, Songhai and Fulani teachers. They came, of course not to bring the Arabic language but to spread Islam, and it was Islam that brought the Arabic language and culture. The Arabic and Hausa languages have different 4 phonological systems and Chapter 2 sets out how these differences affected the borrowed items in Hausa, and points to the great complexity of the relations. Chapter 3 attempts to show how far the loan-words retained their meanings in Arabic and how far these meanings changed in their new environments. It would be impossible in one thesis to deal with all the items, and attention has been focused on the development of Hausa personal names. In many cases the Arabic origins were personal names but in some instances Hausa names have been evolved from other areas e.g. Arabic words for numerals and for days of the week and months of the year. This new and independent development in Hausa is a common feature regarding most loans from Arabic. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT S I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor J. Carnochan for taking the responsibility of supervising this work. His unfailing patience, his kindness, and his deep insights in the two languages subject of this study have been invaluable for the final presentation of this thesis. I hope I have been able to make good use of his comments, suggestions and expert knowledge of African languages. I would also like to thank Mr. C. G. B. Gidley, and Dr. G. Furniss of the School of Oriental and African Studies, for the kind help they offered me in the early stages of my work. The same thanks was due for Dr. M. Last of London University. I wish to express my thanks to Al-haji Junaidu, Wazirin Sokoto, who duringmy field-work visit to Sokoto, was kind enough to discuss the past historical relations between Hausa-land and the Arabs. 6 I am grateful to all my Hausa friends and colleagues with whom I discussed various aspects relating to Arabic loans in Hausa, and who, during my field-work visit to Northern Nigeria, were kind enough to give me much of their valuable time and helped me achieve my mission successfully. Special thanks are due to Dr. A. Dan Garabo, Dr. I. Yahaya, Dr. M, Sani, Dr. A. Abu Bakar, Dr. S. Gunaidu, Dr. 0. Bello and Dr. H. Yusufu. Thanks are also due to Mrs. Zizi El- Labbuudi, a friend from Sudan, with whom I discussed various aspects relating to the development of Arabic personal names in Sudan. I am greatly indebted to the Egyptian Ministry of Education for granting me the necessary scholarship whereby I have been able to read for the degree of Ph.D. in the U.K. Finally I would like to express my sincere thanks to my wife and our three children who have always overwhelmed me with their love, kindness and support. Last, but not least, I would like to thank Miss. Wells for the great pains she has taken in typing this thesis. Thanks are also due to Mr. M. Datko, computer programmer at SOAS, for his help in transferring my thesis files from IBM PC to Macintosh format. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Volume One Page Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 5 Transcription and symbols 9 INTRODUCTION 16 CHAPTER 1 30 The historical background of the borrowing of Arabic loan-words in Hausa General Introduction 31 Sources for this chapter 32 Previous work 35 Multilanguage influence 40 Kanuri 46 Songhai 56 Tuareg 7 6 Loans through the Islamic learning centres 85 Wafcar gargacCii 95 Markib al-8awaam 99 CHAPTER 2 103 Phonological treatment of Arabic loan-words in Hausa General Introduction 104 Consonants 107 Vowels 137 Tone patterns 153 8 CHAPTER 3 155 The semantic treatment of Arabic loan-words in Hausa General Introduction 155 Arabic personal names in Hausa 161 I- Personal names which are 162 derived from Arabic verbs II- Personal names associated 167 with places III- Personal names from the 170 names of the days of the week IV- Personal names from the 175 names of the Prophets V- Personal names from the 182 nicknames of the Prophets Bibliography 191 Volume Two Data Files 3 Symbols and abbreviations 3 06 9 TRANSCRIPTION Two types of transcription are used here, they are:- (I) Hausa orthographic transcription, this employs the conventional way of writing Hausa as used in published literature such as books and newspapers. The entries in the data files, as well as many examples, show the tones and vowel lengths of the words, which do not appear in Hausa orthography, the high tone syllables are left unmarked, and the low tone syllables are marked with underlining. Long vowels are indicated by doubling the letter. (II) The Arabic items are given in transliteration. The following list of symbols represents the Arabic phonological system: Vowels:- /a/ short, open, front vowel. /aa/ long, open, front vowel, /i/ short, front, unrounded vowel varying from close to half-close. /ii/ long, front, unrounded, close vowel. /u/ short, back, rounded vowel varying from close to half- open. /uu/ long, close, rounded back vowel. 10 Consonants:- /?/ £ /b/ i_j /t/ ^ /th/ ....................................... O / j/ ..................................... f: /V ............................ r 1*1 .......................... iz /d/ ..................................... ^ /dh/ ...................................... /r/ ..................................... ^ /z / ..................................... ^ /s/ yjJ /sh/ ..................................... ^ /?/ LK* /d/ ^ /t/ J p /?/ ............................................ /8/ ....................................... e /gh/ ...................................... /f/ cJ? /q/ 6 /k/.. ......... ..... ....... .............. /i/ ............................ J /m/ v6 /n/ ..................................... 0 11 /h/ £ > .........................9 /y/ ...................... «5 The prominent syllable in the Arabic words is preceded by ' . 12 SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS Abr. = Abraham A.C.I .L . AF. = African Affairs. Journal of the Royal African Society. London. A.D. = Anno Domini adj. - Adjective adv. = Adverb A.H. = Anno Hijra ALAS = African Language Studies. S.O.A.S. London AM = African Marburghensia. Marburg Ar. = Arabic Asb. Az. = Asbin Tuareg astro. = Astronomy B. = Bauchi B.A.F. = Bibliototheca Africana. Innsbruck Bar. = Bargery cf. = Compare Chr. = Christian class. = Classical collq. = Colloquial con. = Conjunction d. = Died dat. = Dative d.f. = derived from 13 Dg. - Damagaram E. = East/ East Hausa e.g. = for example E.H. = East Hausa ex. = Example f. = Feminine Fr. = French Ful. = Fulfulde G . = Gume1 gen. = Genitive Go. = Gobir Had. = Hadejia Hau. = Hausa i.e. = That is indef. = Indefinite intens. = Intensive interj = Interjection intr. = Intransitive Isl. = Islam/Islamic J.A. = Journal Asiatique. Paris J.A.H. = Journal of African History. S.O.A.S. London J.A.O.S. = Journal of the American Oriental Society. New Haven Ka. = Kano Kan. = Kanuri Kant. = Kontagora K.S. = Kano Studies. Kano Katg. = Katagum 14 Kats. = Katsina lit. = Literally m. = Masculine N. = North/North Hausa n . = Noun N.A. = North Africa n.f. = Noun feminine N.H. = North Hausa n.m. = Noun masculine No. = Number Nor. = Northern Hausa p. = Person part. = Particle pass. = Passive perf. = Perfect pi. = Plural p.p = Past participle poss. = Possessive pred. = Predicative prep. = Preposition S. = South/South Hausa s . = Something SAL = Studies in African Linguistic. Los Angeles S.H. = South Hausa sing. sng. = Singular So. = Sokoto s.o. = Someone 15 S.O.A.S = School of Oriental and African Studies. London Son. = Songhai s.th. = Something t . = Thing Tas. = Tasawa th. = Thing THSG = Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana TPS = Transactions of the Philological Society.