Modern Standard Arabic: History and Development (original) (raw)

FOLIA ORIENTALIA VOL. LIII — 2016 The Ecology of Case in Modern Standard Arabic

This article studies the developmental behavior of case in Modern Standard Arabic. In the first section, I introduce the position of the case system in pre-Islamic Arabic. It is important to note that case was irrelevant in function and ambivalent in use. Despite that unstable position of case, grammarians of Arabic both medieval and modern give case a prominent position in their theoretical frameworks and in their books. Section two discusses examples from theoretical and didactic works of grammar from both Arab and Western scholars of Arabic. This prominent position allows the case system to be present both in the consciousness of users and in the structures of Modern Standard Arabic. In the third section, I will discuss examples from the modern use of case. I will show that despite the low function of case in Modern Standard Arabic it is present in the minds and texts of users.

Urbanization and the Development of Arabic

This article suggests that the Arabicization of Iraq, Syria and Egypt in the seventh and eighth centuries was made possible by the urbanization of the region. I discuss three relevant points: the manner of conquests, the establishment of Arab urban centers, and the migration of Arabs and non-Arabs to these towns. The article suggests that establishing garrison towns, the concentration of Arabs in these towns, and the subsequent migration of local populations to these towns established the Arabic language as a majority language of prestige. The Arabs' need to communicate for practical reasons enticed them to use simplified registers known in similar modern contexts of language contact as foreigner talk registers. Imperial migration policies permitted Arabs to migrate to the garrison towns only if they belonged to the same tribes that took part in the initial conquest of the province, which permitted only a limited number of Arabic dialects to mix for a long time in the new urban centers. Eventually, the differences among the dialects were leveled and the structures regularized. A new urban koine emerged in every garrison town that was both different from the original dialects of Arabic in the peninsula and from each other. The article suggests that these linguistic processes of simplification and koineization shaped the input that was learnt by the local populations, and caused the differences between the old dialects of Arabic and the new urban dialects in the Arab world.

Towards Understanding the Status of the Dual in Pre-Islamic Arabic

This article suggests that the dual suffix in pre-Islamic Arabic did not differentiate for case. Tamīm, one of the most trustworthy pre-Islamic dialects, treated the dual suffix invariably although it had a full case system. There are also tokens of the same invariable treatment in the Qurʾān. The article proposes that the suffix long vowel variation due to the phenomenon of ʾimāla makes the formal origin of the invariable dual suffix difficult to ascribe to the East and Northwest Semitic oblique dual allomorph.

Urbanization and the Development of Gender in Arabic

This article makes the claim that the difference between Bedouin and urban dialects of Arabic in gender representation in the plural is a function of the urbanization process the urban dialects of Arabic went through in the 7 th century in the conquered territories. Contact-induced linguistic processes of koineization and structural simplification in the newly established urban centers in the Middle East and North Africa helped enhance the gender development that was already in effect before the Arab conquests. By comparing Bedouin and urban dialects to Classical Arabic, the article establishes that the three varieties were in a process of development in gender. Classical Arabic stopped at a particular stage, and Bedouin and urban dialects continued. Comparing Central Asian dialects to urban dialects of Egypt we can see that at least to the 8 th century gender was a common feature of Peninsular dialects. The article concludes by stating that the urban dialects developed further to lose all gender distinction in the plural because of the leveling and borrowing processes of the koineization in the urban centers in their formative period. . Through contact processes of leveling and regularization took place, rendering different koines in different garrison towns because the tribes that participated in the population of each garrison differed. After the conquests proved lucrative, the financial benefits of living in the garrison towns became obvious, and the commercial and agricultural conditions in the provinces worsened, sectors of the monolingual local populations migrated to the vicinity of the booming garrison towns. Due to an imbalance of prestige and wealth, the language of the job givers and wealth owners, Arabic, was chosen to be the language of communication between both groups. Because learning Arabic was informal and the desire to communicate was mutual, Arabs used simplification strategies to make their language more accessible to non-Arab learners. Structural differences between the old peninsular dialects and those of the New Arabic type of the language that was used in the garrison towns, therefore, can be ascribed to the effect of these two contact strategies, koineization and simplification.

Time and tense in basic varieties of Arabic (2020)

Basic human communication typically deals with essential needs in situations that are by definition ephemeral and difficult to capture in observation. Yet, most of us have probably experienced such a situation personally, whether at the sending end when visiting a foreign country whose language we do not know, or at the receiving end when meeting a foreigner who does not speak our language well. Recently, two basic varieties of Arabic, Pidgin Madame and Gulf Pidgin Arabic, have become known, both belonging to the early stages of verbal interaction with non-native speakers of Arabic who have learned a reduced version of the language, commonly known as pidgins. In the present paper I discuss the system of temporal reference in these two varieties of Arabic.