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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 INTERNAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE LOSS OF ARABIC CASE ENDINGS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Ann Marie Gruber-Miller, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1991 Dissertation Committee: Approved by B.D. Joseph F.C. Cadora / " Adviser S . Meier Department of Linguistics Copyright by Ann Marie Gruber-Miller 1991 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to my committee, Professors Brian Joseph, Frederic Cadora, and Sam Meier. Their advice, encouragement, and patience were invaluable in helping me bring together many types of evidence and methodologies into this interdisciplinary work. I am also indebted to The Ohio State University and the U.S. Department of Education for supporting me with three Title VI National Resource Fellowships to study Arabic. I wish to thank the Graduate School at the Ohio State University for granting me a Presidential Fellowship for a year of dissertation research. The opportunity to study for a year in Cairo at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad was made possible through a Center-sponsored fellowship. Permission from John Benjamins Publishing Company to use copyrighted material from my 1990 article is gratefully acknowledged. Finally, I would like to express gratitude to my family for their continual support and encouragement. My appreciation also goes to Stephen Chapdelaine, Ilene Crawford, and Diane Harrington for their technical assistance. Finally, I wish to thank my husband John for his intellectual and emotional support during the last five years. ii VITA July 15, 1953 Born - Nevada, Missouri 1975 B.A., English (with distinction) Manchester College, North Manchester, Indiana 1976-1978 College Campus Coordinator, Regional Coordinator, New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc. (NYPIRG), Albany and Poughkeepsie, New York 1979-1981 Community Organizer, Statewide Administrator, NYPIRG, New York, New York 1981-1983 Graduate Teaching Associate, Graduate Research Associate, Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1982-1985 Title VI National Resource Fellowship (Arabic), U.S. Department of Education, The Ohio State University 1984 University of Virginia/Yarmouk University Summer Arabic Language Program, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan 1985 M.A. in Linguistics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1985-1987 Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University 111 1987-1988 Assistant Editor, Al-*^Arabiwa. Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures The Ohio State University 1988-1989 Presidential Fellowship, The Ohio State University 1989-1990 Center for Arabic Studies Abroad, American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt 1990 Visiting Instructor in Language and Linguistics, Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa PUBLICATIONS (1988). Assistant Editor. Al-*^Arabiwa. Vol. 21. Ed. F. Cadora. Columbus, Ohio: The American Association of Teachers of Arabic. (1987). Assistant Editor (with Sandra Welch). Al-*^Arabiwa. Vol. 20. Ed. F. Cadora. Columbus, Ohio: The American Association of Teachers of Arabic. (1987). Co-Editor (with Joyce Powers). ESCOL '87: Proceedings of the Fourth Eastern States Conference on Linguistics. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics. (1986). Associate Editor (with Zheng-sheng Zhang). ESCOL '86: Proceedings of the Third Eastern States Conference on Linguistics. Ed. F. Marshall. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics. (1990). "Loss of Nominal Case Endings in the Modern Arabic Sedentary Dialects: Evidence from Southern Palestinian Christian Middle Arabic Texts." Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics I. Ed. M. Eld. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. (1987). "Phonetic Characteristics of Levantine Arabic Geminates with Differing Morpheme and Syllable Structures. " Papers from the Linguistics Laboratory 1985- 1987. Ed. M. Beckman and G. Lee. (The Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 36). Pp. 120-40. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics. iv (1986a). "Loss of Nominal Case Endings in the Modern Arabic Sedentary Dialects." Studies on Language Change. Ed. B. Joseph. (The Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 34). Pp. 56-83. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics. (1986b). "Morphological Idiosyncracies in Classical Arabic: Evidence Favoring Lexical Representations over Rules." ESCOL '86: Proceedings of the Third Eastern States Conference on Linguistics. Pp. 393-404. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics. (1986c). "The Origin of the Modern Arabic Sedentary Dialects: An Evaluation of Several Theories." A1 -''Arabiwa 19:47- 74. Columbus, Ohio: The American Association of Teachers of Arabic. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Linguistics Specializations in: Historical Linguistics History of Arabic Arabic Language and Linguistics Phonetics TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS....................................... ii VITA .................................................. iii LIST OF T A B L E S ......................................... ix CHAPTER PAGE I INTRODUCTION .................................. 1 1.0. Introduction ........................... 1 1.1. Changes from Old Arabic to the Modern Sedentary Arabic Dialects .......................... 9 1.2. Hypotheses of Reasons and Chronologies in the Loss of Case E n d i n g s .................. 13 1.2.1. Johann Fuck ............ 13 1.2.2. Joshua B l a u ...................... 15 1.2.3. Harris Birkeland ................... 17 1.2.4. Jean Cantineau andJoshua Blau . 19 1.2.5. Kees V e r s t e e g h .................. 20 1.3. Research Presented in this Dissertation . 23 1.3.1. Chapter I I ...................... 25 1.3.2. Chapters III and IV .............. 25 1.3.2.1. Characteristics of Middle Arabic T e x t s ....................... 25 II CASE ENDINGS BEFORE THE ARAB C O N Q U E S T S ........ 32 2.0. Introduction............................ 32 2.1. Cases in Other SemiticLanguages and as Reconstructed for Semito-Hamitic and Proto- Semitic.................................. 33 2.2. Cases in Pre-Islamic Arabic ............... 51 2.2.1. Evidence from Pre-classical Arabic Inscriptions and Graffiti... ....... 51 2.2.2. Evidence from Pre- and Early Islamic P o e t r y .......................................................... 54 2.2.3. Evidence from the Q u r ' a n ...... 60 2.3. Cases in Arabic at the Beginningof Islam . 63 2.3.1. Evidence from MedievalGrammarians' W r i t i n g s ...................... 63 2.3.2. Vowel Elision ...................... 69 2.3.3. Vowel Assimilation ................ 70 VI 2.3.4. Vowel Harmony and Vowel Preservation (including case vowels)............ 75 2.3.5. Related Phenomena .................. 80 2.3.5.1. Spellings/Pronunciations with Waw for •Alif.............................. 80 2.3.5.2. Pronunciation/Spelling of Nouns Ending in - a ' u ............................ 85 2.3.5.3. Other Reported Pronunciations of Waw for 'Alif.............................. 88 2.4. Conclusions.......................... 91 III EVIDENCE FROM MUSLIM MIDDLE ARABIC ............ 96 3.0. Introduction............................ 96 3.1. Evidence from Long Vowels before Pronoun S u f f i x e s .............................. 100 3.1.1. Conclusions made by Hopkins (1984) 100 3.1.2. Additional Conclusions .......... 108 3.1.2.1. Occasional Pointing of Yâ' as Kursl with Two D o t s ........................ 108 3.1.2.2. Long Vowels Replacing Root-Final Hamza in N o u n s .................... 112 3.1.2.2.1. MA Nouns with Ill-alif or -yâ' . 116 3.1.2.2.2. Muslim and Christian MA Nouns with I l l - w a w .................. 119 3.1.2.2.3. Reanalysis