A Linguistic History of Arabic

by Owens, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780199563302
• ISBN10: 0199563306
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780191537462
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

A Linguistic History of Arabic presents a reconstruction of proto-Arabic by the methods of historical-comparative linguistics. It challenges the traditional conceptualization of an old, Classical language evolving into the contemporary Neo-Arabic dialects. Professor Owens combines established comparative linguistic methodology with a careful reading of the classical Arabic sources, such as the grammatical and exegetical traditions. He arrives at a richer and more complex picture of early Arabic language history than is current today and in doing so establishes the basis for a comprehensive, linguistically-based understanding of the history of Arabic. The arguments are set out in a concise, case by case basis, making it accessible to students and scholars of Arabic and Islamic culture, as well as to those studying Arabic and historical linguists.

Author Biography

Jonathan Owens is Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland where he is on leave from his position as Professor of Arabic Linguistics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Starting his linguistics career with a SOAS PhD on Creole Arabic Nubi of East Africa, he has taught and conducted research at universities in Libya (Garyounis), Nigeria (Maiduguri), and Jordan (Yarmouk). His books include A Grammar of Libyan Arabic, 1984, A Short Reference Grammar of Nigerian Arabic, 1993 and The Foundations of Grammar: an Introduction to Medieval Arabic Grammatical Theory, 1988.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations and Symbols	p. x
Maps	p. xi
Introduction: A Language and Its Secrets	p. 1
Proto-Arabic, Basic Terms	p. 2
The Early Sources	p. 5
The Role of the Modern Dialects in Interpreting Arabic Language History	p. 8
Scope of Work	p. 13
Language Change and Language Transmission	p. 15
A Critical Look at Some Truisms in Arabic Historical Linguistics	p. 20
Summary of Chapters	p. 30
Old Arabic, Neo-Arabic and Comparative Linguistics	p. 34
A Method vs. a Logical Matrix	p. 34
Stages in Arabic	p. 38
Arabic and the Dialects	p. 43
Neo-Arabic and the Neo-German school	p. 47
The Past is the Present: A Modern Logical Matrix	p. 74
The Arabic Tradition	p. 75
Conclusion	p. 77
Case and Proto-Arabic	p. 79
Introduction	p. 80
Case in the Afroasiatic Phylum	p. 80
Classical Arabic	p. 85
The Modern Dialects	p. 101
Case and Caseless Arabic	p. 114
Al-Idgham al-Kabiyr and Case Endings	p. 119
Sharℏ Tayyibat al-Nashr: A Fifteenth-Century Treatise on Koranic Variants	p. 123
Linguistic Attributes of 'Major Assimilation'	p. 125
Interpretive Summary	p. 129
Pre-Diasporic Arabic in the Diaspora: A Statistical Approach to Arabic Language History	p. 137
Introduction	p. 137
Dialects, Procedure, Initial Results	p. 142
Statistical Results and their Meaning	p. 151
Interpretations	p. 157
The Interpretation of Arabic Linguistic History	p. 166
Statistics, Reconstruction, Hypothesis Testing	p. 168
Three Caveats	p. 172
Problems in Coding	p. 173
Nigerian Arabic and Reconstruction of the Imperfect Verb	p. 184
The Basic Imperfect Verb	p. 184
Historical Significance	p. 189
Epenthesis	p. 193
The Old Arabic Evidence	p. 194
The Reconstructions and the Classical Arabic Verbal Mode Endings	p. 195
Imala	p. 197
Imala in Old Arabic	p. 197
Imala in the Modern Dialects	p. 212
Reconstruction	p. 220
Suffix Pronouns and Reconstruction	p. 230
Pausal and Context Forms and Case Endings	p. 230
Suffix Pronouns and Case Endings	p. 234
Pronominal Suffixes, Case Endings and Epenthetic Vowels in Dialects	p. 235
Syllable Structure	p. 237
A Data Survey	p. 237
Unproblematic Cases, Some Easy Generalizations	p. 239
More Difficult Cases	p. 245
Case Traces?	p. 255
Harris Birkeland and Old Arabic Object Pronoun Reconstruction	p. 259
Summary and Epilogue	p. 266
Reconstruction and Continuity with Old Arabic	p. 266
Epilogue	p. 267
List and short summary of dialects included in study	p. 271
List of features used in comparison, Chapter 5, with brief exemplification	p. 276
Imala in Zamaxshari	p. 281
Table of suffix pronouns used in reconstructions in Chapter 8	p. 283
References	p. 285
Index	p. 301
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.