A Linguistic History of Arabic This page intentionally left blank A Linguistic History of Arabic JONATHAN OWENS 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp 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 Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Jonathan Owens 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn ISBN 0–19–929082–2 978–0–19–929082–6 13579108642 Acknowledgements and Dedication The challenge of developing a critical, coherent interpretation of Arabic linguistic history Wrst confronted me when I began teaching a three-semester course on the subject at Bayreuth University, a course which through the (I would like to imagine) enthusiastic participation of students constantly presented new issues and perspectives. A number of individuals contributed to the working and reworking of this book. Two anonymous readers provided stimulating criticism to the entire work, while Orin Gensler set out various challenging objections to Ch. 4, and for Ch. 6 Janet Watson gave helpful and pertinent criticisms and suggestions for new solutions. I would like especially to acknowledge the contribution of my colleague Pierre Larcher for the incisive critical insights he has provided in innumerable discussions, beginning many years ago in Benghazi. The research on Nigerian Arabic, cited frequently in this book, has been supported for many years through the generosity of the Deutsche Forschungs- gemeinschaft (German Research Council). In Nigeria, Dr Jidda Hassan of Maiduguri University provided many native insights into his language, while the university administration has generously supported and encouraged my continuing work there. Not least I would like to acknowledge the invaluable support given me at Bayreuth University over many years by Klaus Wolf of the computer center as well as Dr Brigitte John for providing me with map templates. The correspondence with John Davey of OUP was prompt, invigorating, critical, and encouraging. Finally I would like to thank the publishers Harrassowitz Verlag for allowing me to reproduce portions of ‘Al-Idghaam al-Kabiyr and the History of Arabic’, which appeared in W. Arnold and Bobzin, H. (eds.) (2002). Sprich doch mit deinen Knechten Arama¨isch, wir verstehen es. Festschrift for Otto Jastrow (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz), 503–20, the Oxford University Press for allowing reproduction of large portions of ‘Case and Proto-Arabic’, Bulletin of 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 ‘Pre-Diaspora Arabic: Dialects, Statistics and Historical Reconstruction’. I dedicate the book to the memory of my brother Christopher. This page intentionally left blank 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 5. Pre-Diasporic Arabic in the Diaspora: A Statistical Approach to Arabic Language History 137 5.1. Introduction 137 5.2. Dialects, Procedure, Initial Results 142 5.3. Statistical Results and their Meaning 151 5.4. Interpretations 157 5.5. The Interpretation of Arabic Linguistic History 166 5.6. Statistics, Reconstruction, Hypothesis Testing 168 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 SigniWcance 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.SuYx Pronouns and Reconstruction 230 8.1. Pausal and Context Forms and Case Endings 230 8.2.SuYx Pronouns and Case Endings 234 8.3. Pronominal SuYxes, Case Endings and Epenthetic Vowels in Dialects 235 8.4. Syllable Structure 237 8.5. A Data Survey 237 8.6. Unproblematic Cases, Some Easy Generalizations 239 8.7. More DiYcult Cases 245 8.8. Case Traces? 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 266 9.2. Epilogue 267 Contents ix Appendix 1. List and short summary of dialects included in study 271 Appendix 2. List of features used in comparison, Chapter 5, with brief exempliWcation 276 Appendix 3. Imala in Zamaxshari 281 Appendix 4. Table of suYx pronouns used in reconstructions in Chapter 8 283 References 285 Index 301 Abbreviations and Symbols * Pre-diasporic reconstructed form ** Proto-Arabic form # Word boundary Variant forms 1 First person 2 Second person 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’ suYx 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 Qur?aan; Koranic citation SA Standard Arabic SG Singular V Vowel WSA Western Sudanic Arabic Maps 1. Sample points, Middle Eastern dialects 139 2. North African sample points 140 3. Western Sudanic Arabic 141 4. Reconstruction based on modern dialects of pre-diasporic *-in in participal forms 162 This page intentionally left blank 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, ?Asraar al-@Arabiyya, ‘The Secrets of Arabic’, or Ibn Jinni’s (d. 1002), Sirr Sinaa@at al-?i@raab, ‘The Secret of the Craft of Grammar (or InXection)’.˚ Others unlock its secrets, such as Sakkaki’s Miftaah al-@Uluwm, ‘The Key to the Sciences’, and some, like the early tenth-century grammarian Ibn Al-Sarraj’s Al-Usuwl Wy 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, signiWcant 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.