THE DIALECT OF WOMEN IN MEKNES (): GENDER LINKED SOUND CHANGES?

Harry Stroomer Universiry qf Leiden

1. Introduction

In the archives of the well-known Berbero1ogist Arsene Roux (1893-1971) in Aix-en-Provence I retrieved an extensive documen• tation on the Arabic dialect of Meknes. 1 Mr. Roux, an expert in Berber (Tamaziyt), Tashelhit Berber (Tafl&iyt) and the Arabic dialects of Morocco, lived in Meknes from 1919 until 1927. He acquired an intimate knowledge of the dialect of this town. Among the Meknes Arabic documents I found his thesis titled Le parler arabe des musulmanes de Meknes (dated 1925), with which Roux had obtained a DiplOme superieur de langue et litterature arabe. In this unpublished thesis he analysed the Meknes dia1ect with particular emphasis on the speech of women. The work has 310 pages and is divided into three sections: the first section contains texts in Meknes Arabic and their translations (pp. 1-133); the second section deals with Phonetique (phonetics and phonology, pp. 134-193); the third section deals with Morphologie (verb, noun, article, demon• stratives, pronouns, pronominal affixation to verb and nouns, pp. 194-309). For the modern reader, Roux's thesis is somewhat out• dated, but neverthe1ess a thorough phonological and morphological study of a dialect that-as far as I know-never received any sc hol• arly attention. The first section of Roux's thesis, twenty-eight texts and transla• tions, is by far the most interesting for Arabic dialecto1ogists. Here the reader is immediately confronted with phonetic and morpho• logical characteristics of the Meknes Arabic of women. Roux has written these texts carefully, in his own handwriting, in an excellent 'narrow' phonetic transcription. The main goal of this article is to

I Cardboard boxes 6 unti! 11, see the forthcoming catalogue of the Fonds Roux by Stroomer & Peyron (2003). 292 HARRY STROOMER present so me of these texts in order to illustrate three regular sound changes. When one compares the speech of women in Meknes (SWM) to a hypothetical Common (CMA) , the following changes can be observed:

CMA SWM (in Roux's documents)

s » s or s with subscript comma ma ta ifzq si » ma ta isuf si 'he does not see' msa » msa 'he went' laMifa » la~sisa 'hashish-paste' baf » bas 'in order to' 2 J2 » z or Z with subscript comma jiit » ziit 'she came' Jennryya » zennryya )innee-woman' jibha » zibha 'bring her' ujh » uzh 'face' 3 r » y or r with subscript comma rru~liniyya » eyyu~liniyya )innee-woman' lart! » lliyt! 'earth, ground' la~rir » la~yiy 'silk' These sound changes may be found combined in one word:

1+3: frili » syili 'buy for me' 2+3: xery"et » xeyzet 'she went out' srya » sytza 'saddle' tergra » tenzya 'kettle' In his thesis Roux gives some phonetic details. As for s from fand z from j he says: Le s provenant du s se distingue dans une audition attentive du s ordi• naire; il semble un tantinet plus mouille que ce dernier; mais j'avoue que cette diffhence m'apparaissait surtout dans les mots de racine con• nue: au contraire, il m'a ete impossible, dans les mots encore incon• nus de moi, de distinguer si j'avais a faire a un s ou a un f. La meme remarque vaut pour j et Z. 3 In his article of 1952 Roux puts it slightly different, suggesting an audible difference:

2 In the transCl-iption used by Roux, this jappears as Z (both are I.P.A. [3]). 3 Roux (1925:146).