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Some of the earliest voice recordings of Arabic made for linguistic purposes date from World War I and were made by German authorities who recorded prisoners of war in the Halbmondlager camp outside of Berlin. This study analyzes two voice records in particular, which are labelled 'Tripolitanisch-Arabisch (Tunesien)' and stem from what is now southern Tunisia. This study seeks to historicise the scientific context of these voice records as well as interpret the linguistic data preserved by them in the light of Arabic dialectology. It also raises questions about the reliability of both voice recordings and printed linguistic data from the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sogdian Epigraphy of Central Asia and Semirech'e. By VLADIMIR A. LiVSHITS, translated by TOM STABLEFORD and edited by NICHOLAS SIMS-WILLIAMS. Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, pt. II: Inscriptions of the Seleucid and [...]

This paper discusses agreement patterns in Kalīla wa-Dimna, a collection of animal fables translated from Middle Persian to Arabic in the 8th century CE by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and considered one of the masterpieces of early Arabic prose. It advances the hypothesis that the text bears traces of interference from the L1 of its translator, Middle Persian. Kalīla wa-Dimna features agreement patterns unattested in any other described variety of Arabic. The paper provides an introduction to the complex textual history of Kalīla wa-Dimna, followed by a detailed analysis of the agreement patterns emerging from the text. A survey of agreement in both Arabic (in its written and spoken varieties) and Middle Persian then highlights the main differences between the two systems, followed by a discussion of the possible interference that resulted in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ's reinterpretation of the Arabic system as based on animacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his study of Arabic phonetics, Asbāb ḥudūṯ al-ḥurūf (The Causes of the Genesis of the Consonants), Ibn Sīnā briefly surveys some speech sounds found in languages other than Arabic, among them one particular to Khwarizmian, an Iranian language attested primarily in glosses to Arabic manuscripts of the 13th century. This study attempts to elucidate the sound Ibn Sīnā describes both through reference to his own system of phonetic terminology and through comparison with extant material in the Khwarizmian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the copula systems of Sogdian, an extinct Middle Iranian language, and Yaghnobi, a modern eastern Iranian language. It argues that Sogdian has one copula for the relations of existence, location, and possession, and develops three new, distinct copulas for identification and attribution. It also argues that the Yaghnobi system is similar, with a copula for existence and possession and two copulas for identification, attribution, and location. This paper suggests that the innovated Sogdian forms resulted from the combination of pronouns with the existential verb, with a possible distinction in their syntax based on the deixis of the copularizing pronouns. Finally, it shows that the large number of copula forms in Sogdian result from the re‐analysis of the copulas as verbal stems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By producing certain types of knowledge and discourse and rendering medieval sources such as Ibn Khaldūn into the terms of that discourse, colonial Orientalists delimited what it was possible to know about both the medieval and modern Maghrib. Concerned with the narrative of the "Arabization" of the Maghrib distilled out of Ibn Khaldūn by colonial scholars, the field of Arabic dialectology attempted to use linguistic research on modern Arabic to buttress this narrative while employing it to categorize its results. This article examines how particular categories such as divisions of "Bedouin" dialects originated through this type of colonial scholarship, and how they have lived on until now as the categories into which current research is fit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Libyan varieties of both Arabic and Berber are among the least researched in their respective fields. In order to facilitate the study of these varieties, we present an annotated bibliography of all relevant research that could be identified up until the middle of 2016. With this, we aim to identify both the gaps in current and the possibilities for future research. Studies are grouped into Arabic and Berber sections, and subgrouped according to region. For Arabic, dialects of Tripoli and western regions, Benghazi and eastern regions, Fezzan and southern regions, as well as Jewish dialects, are treated. For Berber, varieties of Zwara, the Nafusa mountains, Sokna and El-Foqaha, and Awjila, and Tuareg are treated. Short introductions highlighting the most important studies precede bibliographic references and brief comments are given when of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a project designed to functionally test the mutual intelligibility of spoken Maltese, Tunisian Arabic, and Benghazi Libyan Arabic. We compiled an audio-based intelligibility test consisting of three components: a word test where the respondents were asked to perform a semantic classification task with 11 semantic categories, a sentence test where the task was to provide a translation of a sentence into the respondent’s native language, and a text test where a short text was listened to twice and the respondents were asked to answer 8 multiple-choice questions. Data were collected from 24 respondents in Malta, Tunis, and Benghazi. It was found that there exists asymmetric mutual intelligibility between the two mainstream varieties of Maġribī Arabic and Maltese, with speakers of Tunisian and Libyan Arabic able to understand about 40% of what is being said to them in Maltese, against about 30% for speakers of Maltese exposed to either variety of Arabic. Additionally, it was found that Tunisian Arabic has the highest level of mutual intelligibility with either of the other two varieties. Combining the intelligibility scores with comparative linguistic data, we were able to sketch out the phonological variables involved in enabling and inhibiting mutual intelligibility for all three varieties of Arabic and set the stage for further research into the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on copulas in Arabic dialects has hitherto largely focused on the pronominal copula, and has also mostly ignored Maghrebi dialects. Drawing on published literature as well as fieldwork-based corpora, this article identifies and analyzes a hitherto undescribed verbal copula in dialects of Tunisian and northwestern Libya deriving from the verb yabda ("to begin"). We show that copular yabda occurs mostly in predicational copular sentences, with time reference including the habitual present and generic future. It takes nominal, adjectival, and locational predicate types. We also argue for broader inclusion of syntactic isoglosses in Arabic dialectology, and show how copular yabda crosses the traditional isogloss lines established on the basis of phonology, morphology, or lexicon, and therefore contradicts established dialect classifications such as Bedouin/sedentary or Tunisian/Libyan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution, Chris Nickell and Adam Benkato think together about the mobilization of Blackness in Arabic hip hop from two different contexts: a rap battle in Beirut, Lebanon and music videos from Benghazi, Libya. In both, hip hop artists confront Blackness with the nation through the Afro-diasporic medium of hip hop. Although the examples we consider here participate, in several ways, in hip hop's larger generic functions as a globalized Black medium of resistance, they also bolster pre-existing discourses of race and racism, anti-Blackness in particular. We argue that this seeming contradiction--instances of anti-Blackness appearing in an iteration of a Black expressive form--is in fact a feature, not a bug, of the flexible way the genre works. We have paired these two examples, which we describe and analyze individually given their differing social contexts as well as our differing research focuses, in order to glimpse the discursive level at which racecraft functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]