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The complexities of Arabic phonology have been documented in detail in particular in the dialectological and theoretical phonological traditions. In this paper we argue for the incorporation of a third perspective into Arabic linguistics, an Arabic-internal typological perspective. Eleven geographically representative dialects are compared along a common parameter, the structure of simple CaCaC nouns and verbs, followed by the addition of first one, then two suffixes. The suffixes are either identical across the noun/verb categories or are closely parallel. These basic structures are treated descriptively, and in addition two quantified indices, a paradigm diversity index and a consistency index are developed to facilitate a comparative overview. The phonological parameters are fundamental to Arabic: the treatment of short stressed/unstressed vowels in open syllables, constraints on CCC sequences or trisyllabic syncope for instance. What emerges is a cline of increasing phonological complexity as one, then two suffixes are added. Most striking, however, is the role played by morphophonology in informing the ever increasing degree of variation among the eleven dialects. Arabic syllabic phonology and morphophonology emerges as paradoxically at one and the same time, parsimonious and complex. A very few phonological rules produce a very high degree of contrastive forms among the eleven dialects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature on trade and cultural exchange between the Indian Ocean regions has already contributed significantly to our understanding of these processes and the role of language and writing within them. Yet, the question remains how Arabic correspondence played a part in communications between South Asian powers and the rulers in the Red Sea region. In order to begin filling this lacuna, this article studies epistolary writings from the Bahmani Sultanate (748/1347-934/1528) to the Mamluk Sultanate (648/1250-922/1517) during the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century. The contextualisation and discussion of three letters render insight both into the (up to now unstudied) issues at play in Bahmani-Mamluk relations and into the nature of these Arabic texts. Résumé: Un certain nombre d'études sur le commerce et l'échange culturel entre les différentes régions de l'océan Indien a contribué d'une manière considérable à nos connaissances sur ces processus et sur le rôle de la langue et de l'écriture en usage lors de ces contacts. Néanmoins, la question du rôle de la langue arabe dans les communications entre les puissances sud-asiatiques et les souverains de la zone de la Mer Rouge reste inexplorée. Dans le but de combler cette lacune, cet article étudie des écrits épistolaires du Sultanat Bahmani (748/1347-934/1528) au Sultanat mamelouk (648/1250-922/1517) lors de la seconde moitié du neuvième/quinzième siècle. La mise en contexte et l'analyse de trois lettres offrent un aperçu sur les différents enjeux (jusqu'à présent non étudiés) dans les relations entre les Bahmanis et les Mamelouks ainsi que sur la nature de ces textes arabes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his significant Arabic translation and interpretation of the Pauline Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, Bišr b. al-Sirrī used muʿtazila to translate Pharisee throughout his work. This paper elaborates upon the multiple difficulties in revealing the connotations of muʿtazila in Bišr’s work from the middle of the third/tenth century. Furthermore, it offers an explication of his particular use of this term by taking into consideration several aspects, especially the nuance of ascetic piety. Dans sa traduction arabe et son interprétation des Épîtres de Paul et des Actes des Apôtres, Bišr b. al-Sirrī a utilisé le terme muʿtazila pour traduire « pharisien » tout au long de son ouvrage. Cet article développe les multiples difficultés à révéler les connotations de muʿtazila dans l’ouvrage de Bišr à partir du milieu du troisième/dixième siècle. En outre, il présente une explication de son utilisation particulière de ce terme en prenant en considération plusieurs aspects, en particulier la nuance de la piété ascétique. This article is in German. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the feminine ending -at in the Qurʾānic Consonantal Text. It argues that from the Qurʾānic Consonantal Text, and various data of comparative linguistic evidence, it is likely that the language of the Qurʾānic Consonantal Text goes back to a variety of Arabic where the feminine ending was treated as a diptote. It is moreover argued, that this feminine ending was likely also diptotic in Proto-Arabic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on cross-cultural pragmatics has primarily focused on how native speakers of different languages perform speech acts in relation to politeness and directness. However, Gabriele Kasper (2006), among others, has called for adopting a more discursive approach rather than analyzing data according to the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) coding scheme. Therefore, this paper used Conversation Analysis for Interlanguage Pragmatics to investigate sequence organization of requests in Australian English and Saudi Arabic using role-play scenarios. It specifically examined pre-expansions, pre-pres, accounts in request turn, insertexpansions, and post-expansions, and the extent to which the social variable power affects them. The results showed that both languages shared some regularities in aspects of sequence organization but differed in others. Power influenced the production of some regularities in both languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas the Algerian Ulama are usually perceived as an elite, giving value only to Jushä Arabic and despising the local dialects, an article promoting the vernacular Arabic language ( 'ämmiyya) and enhancing its use was published in one of their newspapers in February 1936. This original argumentation leads us to question their link to the Arabic language, conceived as a comprehensive entity composed by a founding language and its various branches. In colonial context, the priority was in fact to preserve this language from foreign influences to struggle against acculturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As linguistic systems, Latin and Arabic have interacted for centuries. The article at hand aims at analysing the status of the Latin language in the Arab and Arabic-Islamic sphere. Starting out from the observation that Latin-Christian and Arabic-Islamic scholarship dedicated a very different degree of attention to the study of the respective 'other' language in the course of the centuries, the article traces the impact of Latin on an emerging Arabic language in Antiquity, provides an overview on the various references to Latin found in works of Arabic-Islamic scholarship produced in the medieval and modem periods, and provides an exhaustive list of Arabic translations of Latin texts. A description of the role played by Latin in the Arabic-speaking world of our times is followed by a discussion of several hypotheses that try to explain why Latin was rarely studied systematically in the Arabic-Islamic sphere before the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing that we know little about Arab settlement and Muslim populations in Armenia and Caucasian Albania during the Abbasid period, this article considers the data available in specific biographical compendia in Arabic: the works of al-Sam'änl, Ibn al-Atir, Yäqüt, al-Safadï, and Ibn Hallikän. It examines entries of notable Muslims from the fourth/eleventh through the seventh/fourteenth centuries with the nisbas related to the three provinces of the North. These tell of ethnic diversity, but also perceived geographical, scholarly, and ideological connectivity between the North and the more central lands of Islam and, specifically, the Persian cultural sphere. They engage themes and ideas that are key to the study of medieval Islam, such as ethnic diversity, slavery, the geographical definition of Islam, gihäd, tugür, Sufism and asceticism, travel f i talab al-'ilm, and lines of transmission and authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze two pericopes (Mt 3,1-12,13-17) of the Arabic version contained in Codex Vat. Ar. 13 corresponding to the restored section of the Gospels rendered from an original Syriac text. Our aim in this article is to contribute to the hypothesis that the two sections of the translation of the Gospels have been made from two different originals. So while the text contained in the oldest section has been translated from a Greek original, though revised with a Syriac text, however the text of the restored section (corresponding to four hands) has been rendered from a Syriac text apparently previous to the Pesïttâ, or maybe revised from a Greek text. At the same time, we also emphasize the difference between these two corpora of translations, which not only come from two different Vorlagen, but they also are the result of different strategies followed by the translator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saudi novelist Badriyya l-Bišr, a well-known advocate for women's rights in her country, uses her novel Hind wa-l-'askar (Hind and the Soldiers) to trace the growth and the struggle of a young woman in a rigid, conventional society. As the novel's title suggests, the female protagonist, Hind, finds herself in a situation of war at different stages in her life-war against various forces that deny her self-expression and jeopardize her happiness as a human being. Yet the novel is not just a series of complaints about the grievances experienced by women in Saudi Arabia; it focuses in the main on women's potential and their power to use their judgment and arm themselves with all the weapons available to them in order to overcome oppression and marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to use evidence from contemporary language use to shed light on that of an earlier period. It examines a set of ḫarǧāt, the closing sections of medieval Andalusian muwaššah poems, which exhibit codeswitching between colloquial Andalusian Arabic and Romance, and compares the patterns of switching seen there with those used in some contemporary popular songs, in particular the Arabic-French switching used in the rai lyrics of North Africa. On the basis of the parallels and contrasts observed, some remarks are made about what the language of these ḫarǧāt suggests about their origins and authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qantara lladi kafar, written by Egyptian author Mustafa Musarrafa in the 1940s and published in 1966, is often presented as "the first novel entirely written in colloquial Arabic", breaking with the two major paradigms followed in dealing with diglossia in fiction: either the exclusive use of standard Arabic as a condition and guaranty of literariness, or a distributive use of the full linguistic spectrum, with the narrator using the high variety and characters left with the one linked with orality. But can half of the spectrum effectively be expelled from literary prose? This article argues that Musarrafa, while selecting colloquial Cairene Arabic as his matrix variety, continuously embeds the standard language in both its classical and modern stages and humor-ously comments diglossia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The familiar Arabic pronominal object marker iyyā- performs other functions within the language. One of these, the demonstrative, has been recognized in spoken Egyptian Arabic but passes virtually unremarked in written Arabic. Nevertheless, it is so used by writers from the eastern Arabophone world more often than by those from the west. As such, it usually performs four roles in structuring information: expressing contrast, emphatic reflexivity, and two degrees of distal deixis. While modern Arab writers appear to use it demonstratively more often than did those of medieval and classical Arabic, that earlier writers were using it suggests that its demonstrative property is an inherent feature. This is confirmed by comparing object markers in other Semitic languages, which may function as demonstratives in Hebrew and Aramaic, reflexives in Syriac, and in remote deixis in Amharic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to what has been claimed by medieval Arab authors and some modern scholars, the epistle attributed to Sahl b. Hārūn in the Book of Misers does not defend avarice. This research argues that this epistle is a satirical parody created by al-Gāhiz in order to correct the defect of some of his contemporaries, particularly those who belong to the elite of the society. Our study attempts to show that al-Gāhiz uses irony in a pragmatic way to decry the attitude of one of his contemporaries dominated by the evil of avarice. The epistle is thus in perfect harmony with other elements of the book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mirror for princes known as the Nasīhat al-mulūk of al-Māwardī, probably a tenth-century text, is replete with references to sources identified by the author as "Indian". A large number of these texts also appear in the so-called Wasiyyat Aristātālīs li-l-Iskandar; some examples find parallels in Kalīla wa-Dimna and Bilawhar wa-Būdāsaf. These coincidences raise several possibilities: first, that the author's "Indian" source represents a work of Indic background, translated from Sanskrit or another Indian language into Arabic, probably at the time when the Barmakids were sponsoring such translations in significant numbers; secondly, that it was rendered from an Indian language into Middle Persian in the Sasanian period and from that language into Arabic in the early centuries of the Islamic era; thirdly, that the text was composed in a non-Indian language, probably Middle Persian, and acquired a "forged" Indian genealogy in a parallel to the numerous spurious Greek attributions (a category that would subsequently include the pseudo-Aristotelian testament). The article addresses these three possibilities, and, on the basis of textual and contextual considerations, suggests that at the present stage of research, it is the second that seems most likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé Cette note présente le Taqwīm al-lisān, ouvrage relativement peu connu d'Ibn al-Ğawzī (m. 597/1200) appartenant au genre du lan al-āmma. Le petit traité d'Ibn al-Ğawzī présente plusieurs motifs d'intérêt dont la relative originalité des phénomènes linguistiques recensés constitue le trait le plus intéressant. L'ouvrage est placé dans le contexte des controverses linguistiques entre philologues arabes et examiné sous l'angle de l'utilité de ce genre de textes pour l'histoire de la langue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article deals with the reception and the etymology of the term r/zāmhrān, a 'foreign' drug name occasionally occurring in medieval Arabic pharmacological literature. The argument rests on the sources and focuses on philological documentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contains a translation (Arabic-English) with introduction and commentary of the events of years 655/1257 and 656/1258 of al-awādi al-gāmia including two qaīdas, written by an Iraqi anonymous author. It deals with the conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols and the death of the last Abbasid caliph al-Mustaim. al-awādi al-gāmia is a very interesting local Iraqi chronicle of the VIIth/XIIIth century and provides an abundance of detail that is not to be found elsewhere. Historiography of the period can often be divided along Arabic-Mamluk and Persian-Mongol lines; however, this chronicle cannot really be situated on either side. Translations of other primary sources of this event, both Arabic and Persian, have been made available; this translation not only complements them, but also adds a local perspective to the evaluation of the events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with contemporary Arabic through a corpus extracted from the website www.aljazeera.net. Before comparing the extended verbal forms of this corpus with the same verbal forms found in the newspaper al-ayāt, it first defines the object as well as the analysis method of the corpora. In a third part, it moves on to the study of the extended verbal forms, like this: (1) the analysis of few significant instances, (2) the statistical report of this few values for the forms of each corpus. The whole of these instances reveals that, if there are some evolutions in the functioning of the forms in relation to the Arabist standard, the Internet corpus does not present any single one in comparison to the paper corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undoubtedly, there are still a handful of ambiguous expressions and unidentified arabicized words in the works of al-āi whose true significations and correct pronunciations are not yet known. It is quite possible that over the centuries, a number of unqualified scribes misread, at least some of these words and thus recorded the corrupt and miswritten forms in their manuscripts. The authors have identified seven arabicized words throughout the works of al-āi whose true meanings and proper pronunciations were obscure due to certain diacritical misreadings or erroneous interpretations; these words, which the authors assume to have acquired their proper form and meaning are afšāraāt, bābakīr, bāzīkand, bānuwān, awāmork, sošyant, kandū.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arabic annexion is a basic and frequent nominal (phrase) structure which can be important not only in itself but also for translation and automatic text generation applications. The structure is expanded by concatenating to it more nouns, thus forming annexion strings. We examine here whether in colloquial and Modern Literary Arabic similar limitations exist, whether there are differences between them. Limitations and constraints on the number of words that can be connected in an annexion string were investigated for another Semitic language, Hebrew (Rosenhouse, "On the use", "Construct", and here). This study compares also Hebrew and Arabic annexion strings from the point of view of their length limitations. The article is based on literary Arabic as used in newspapers and books and on transcribed texts of colloquial Arabic. Some Hebrew journalese and spoken texts have also been examined for comparison. Our findings suggest positive answers to our questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Al-dād is a unique sound in Arabic. It is believed that this sound is what makes Arabic a distinguished language. However, its description has confused the linguists for long time. Some modern linguists believe that al-dād described by the ancient linguists is not used in the present time. On the other hand, Arabic speakers may not know that the sound they use for the classical pronunciation of al-dād is not the one described by the ancient Arab linguists. This study records the existence of a sound that has the features of al-dād as described by the ancient Arab linguists. It is used among some speakers in Southwest Saudi Arabia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on novels written in Modern Standard Arabic published between 1963 and 2005 and from the entire Arab world, this article suggests how the hypothetical systems of this variety of language no longer correspond to the established “classical” model. Specifically, it demonstrates that the so called MSA grammar books are, when facing the reality of the texts, descriptively inadequate. It then shows how the modern Arabic conditional clause, on its literary level, has created a kind of sequences of tenses, certainly influenced by European languages such as French and English. Therefore this is no longer the operator of the hypothetical system (idā, in and law) that enables us to understand the meaning of a conditional clause, but the relationship existing between the operator of the hypothetical system's protasis and the verbal form of the apodosis of that system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals, in the first place, with the religious identity of the Arabic language as defined by the ongoing debate, in 16th-17th century Spain, about its identification with Islam. Many new Christians of Muslim origin (Moriscos) tried to break this identification in an effort to salvage part of their culture, and specially the language, by separating it from Islam. I will argue that the Morisco forgery known as the Lead Books of the Sacromonte in Granada—an Arabic Evangile dictated by the Virgin Mary to Arabic disciples who came to Spain with the Apostle Saint James—was part of this effort. When the Lead Books were taken to the Vatican to be informed, they were studied by Maronite scholars who decided that they were written in “Muslim Arabic” and therefore could not be authentic Christian texts. The Maronites were engaged in creating and consolidating their own version of Christian Arabic to define and legitimise their own position inside the Roman world. The second part of the essay adresses the theological considerations and the defence of different cultural identities which are implied in these different versions of Arabic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term taqdīr is mostly used in Arabic grammatical tradition to refer to underlying structures, i.e. to sentences, forms etc. intended by the speakers but which differ from the sentences, forms etc. which they actually utter. This is also the sense modern scholars have in mind when discussing taqdīr. Yet the term proves to have a significantly wider extension, embracing also cases where it pertains not to underlying structures, but to properties possessed by constituents at surface structure, such as the syntactic functions they assume and the parts of speech to which they belong. Both usages of the term taqdīr, however, are derived from the single basic sense it conveys, viz. speakers' intention. This argument is illustrated in the present article through Ibn Hišām's writings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign language

Explores the classification of knowledge in pre-modern Islam as a function of competing social values within Islamic society with reference to the works of three state servitors and a librarian. Role of state servitors in the earliest attempts to classify knowledge; Analysis of the literary works; Significance of the Arabic language in an early Islamic society to the classification of knowledge.

Presents cases of linguistic interaction which fall within the category of borrowing in Thomason and Kaufman's 1988 language contact model. Types of linguistic interaction; Arabic interference in languages within the Arabophone area; Arabic loanwords in Persian, Turkish and Urdu.

Presents information on Arabic sociolinguistics. Variation in the Arabic grammatical tradition; Levels and gradients of spoken Arabic; Social correlations of Arabic sociolinguistics.

Characterizes the grammar of the Arabic language in the early third and fourth centuries. Discussion on the theoretical basis of the restoration of an; Reasons for the restoration of an; Meaning of the construction with fa and the structure of bab al-fa in the Kitab; Details on later developments in bab al-fa.

Focuses on the missing link between Arabic grammatical and legal reasoning. Elements of Ibn Wallad's debating technique; Main components of formal dialectic in the Intisar; Conclusion.