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This work focuses the social context of writing in ancient Western Arabia in the oasis of ancient Dadan, modern-day al-ʿUlā in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula between the sixth to first centuries BC. It offers a description and analysis of the language of the inscriptions and the variation attested within them. It is the first work to perform a systematic study of the linguistic variation of the Dadanitic inscriptions. It combines a thorough description of the language of the inscriptions with a statistical analysis of the distribution of variation across different textual genres and manners of inscribing. By considering correlations between language-internal and extralinguistic features this analysis aims to take a more holistic approach to the epigraphic object. Through this approach an image of a rich writing culture emerges, in which we can see innovation as well as the deliberate use of archaic linguistic features in more formal text types.

As a culture area the Arab world has had different ecological structures — nomadic (bedouin) and sedentary (rural and urban) — with parallel linguistic systems. Throughout the long history of the Arabic language, the development of transitional stages has generated linguistic correlates in Arabic dialects. The notion'ecolinguistics,'combined and reinforced with the concepts of'compatibility'and'lexical diffusion,'is introduced in this study to identify such a sociolinguistic change. The domain of change for this ecolinguistic variation is the extended family in which the middle generation develops new lexical items by the application of ecolinguistic rules. This research also provides a description of these rules which speakers generate as they gradually acquire an awareness of the social parameters for their use.The theoretical framework and the putative results of this study are offered to stimulate further research in the causation and implementation of linguistic change, especially in terms of quantitative analyses of ecolinguistic variation and lexical diffusion in the Arabic language.

The linguistic categories of aspect, tense and action are closely interrelated. In the first part of Aspect, Tense and Action in the Arabic dialect of Beirut, Stefan Bruweleit defines the three categories and describes the interplay between them at a metagrammatical level. In the next parts he applies the theoretical findings of the first part to the Arabic dialect of Beirut, investigates the ways temporal, aspectual and actional categories are expressed and shows how to decide whether the verb system of the dialect has to be regarded as aspectual or as temporal. One of the main results of the work is the fact that a thorough understanding of a verb system is only possible through an understanding of the categorial interplay of aspect, tense and action.

This volume brings together a number of previously published papers, which reflect a middle-of-the-road approach in Linguistic Analysis. The first part contains articles dealing with major grammatical techniques and strategies in Arabic dialects: articles on syllabication, stress and intonation in an urban Arabic dialect as well as on lexical borrowing. The second part deals with linguistic substitution as verbal dynamism, and with riddles and riddling in an Algerian context. Ce volume est un ensemble des articles déjà publiés dans le domaine de l'analyse linguistique. La méthodologie suivie est structural-fonctionnaliste. La première partie contient deux articles traitant de sujets de dialectologie arabe, entre autres l'utilisation des marqueurs de la possession dans des dialectes arabes du Maghreb et de la Péninsule Arabique, les diverses structures syllabiques, l'accent et les contours d'intonation dans un dialecte arabe urbain. La deuxième partie s'occupe des énigmes en contexte algérien et deux autres articles sur la suppléance linguistique en arabe dialectal.

This socio-linguistic study throws new light on variation and the defining of register in Arabic political discourse. The research is based on three dialects (Egyptian, Iraqi and Libyan) and on political speeches delivered by Gamal Abdunnasir, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Al Gadhdhafi.

Arabic, one of the official languages of the United Nations, is spoken by more than half a billion people around the world and is of increasing importance in today's political and economic spheres. The study of the Arabic language has a long and rich history: earliest grammatical accounts date from the 8th century and include full syntactic, morphological, and phonological analyses of the vernaculars and of Classical Arabic. In recent years the academic study of Arabic has become increasingly sophisticated and broad. This state-of-the-art volume presents the most recent research in Arabic linguistics from a theoretical point of view, including computational linguistics, syntax, semantics, and historical linguistics. It also covers sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and discourse analysis by looking at issues such as gender, urbanization, and language ideology. Underlying themes include the changing and evolving attitudes of speakers of Arabic and theoretical approaches to linguistic variation in the Middle East.

This volume is the first of its kind to deal with a variety of topics by leading scholars related to the use of Arabic in the media. The contributors examine patterns of language use in traditional as well as'new'media types, in order to further our understanding of the mechanism at work in the development of modern Arabic, both in its standard and colloquial varieties. The first part of this volume is devoted to a close analysis of various aspects of media Arabic (code-switching, language variation, orthography and constructions of identity); the second part builds on the first, as it asks, to what extent does the Arabic used in the media reflect social and linguistic realities of Arabic speaking audiences (‘clichéd'dialects, code-switching and socialects)? How can our knowledge of the linguistic reality of the media in the Arab world contribute to teaching the media to foreign students learning Arabic?

Beyond Lexical Variation in Modern Standard Arabic presents several aspects concerning Modern Standard Arabic. It analyzes the different forms of lexical variation, and the causes for these variations. This starting point led to many other vital issues related to the present state of the Arabic Language such as language planning, native speakers'identity and fears and most importantly the relationship between the different Arabic varieties: Classical, Modern Standard, and dialects. The book analyzes lexical variation comprehensively and provides deep insights on the present state of the language with some speculations on its future.

Filling a gap in the literature currently available on the topic, this edited collection is the first examination of the interplay between urbanization, language variation and language change in fifteen major Arab cities. The Arab world presents very different types and degrees of urbanization, from well established old capital-cities such as Cairo to new emerging capital-cities such as Amman or Nouakchott, these in turn embedded in different types of national construction. It is these urban settings which raise questions concerning the dynamics of homogenization/differentiation and the processes of standardization due to the coexistence of competing linguistic models. Topics investigated include: History of settlement The linguistic impact of migration The emergence of new urban vernaculars Dialect convergence and divergence Code-switching, youth language and new urban culture Arabic in the Diaspora Arabic among non-Arab groups. Containing a broad selection of case studies from across the Arab world and featuring contributions from leading urban sociolinguistics and dialectologists, this book presents a fresh approach to our understanding of the interaction between language, society and space. As such, the book will appeal to the linguist as well as to the social scientist in general.