Perspectives on Arabic linguistics VI: papers from the sixth annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Volume 4

PERSPECTIVES ON ARABIC LINGUISTICS VI

AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E.F. KONRAD KOERNER (University of Ottawa)

Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY

Advisory Editorial Board Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles) Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); John E. Joseph (Hong Kong) Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.) E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)

Volume 115

Mushira Eid, Vicente Cantarino and Keith Walters (eds) Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics VI

PERSPECTIVES ON ARABIC LINGUISTICS VI PAPERS FROM THE SIXTH ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM ON ARABIC LINGUISTICS Edited by

MUSHIRA EID University of Utah, Salt Lake City

VICENTE CANTARINO Ohio State University, Columbus

KEITH WALTERS University of Texas, Austin

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA 1994

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Catalog Serial Number: 91-641663 ISBN 90 272 3618 6 (Eur.)/l-55619-569-9 (US) © Copyright 1994 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O. Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • 821 Bethlehem Pike • Philadelphia, PA 19118 • USA

Table of Contents

Foreword Introduction

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I. Arabic in Contact: The Hispano-Arabic Connection Current State of Research in the Field of Andalusi Arabic: Achievements and prospects Federico Corriente

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Aljamiado and the Moriscos' Islamicization of Spanish Consuelo López Morilla

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From Spoken to Written Language and Back: Some cultural considerations on Hispano-Arabic phonetics Vicente Cantarino

25

On Hispano-Arabic Historical Phonology: Latin and Romance evidence Máximo Torreblanca

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Elements of Romance Prosody in the Poetry of Ibn Quzman James Monroe

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H. Arabic in Contact: Other Connections Connectives in Arabic Diglossia: The case of Lebanese Arabic Mahmoud Al-Batal Classical Arabic in Contact: The transition to near categorical agreement patterns R. Kirk Belnap & John Gee

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vi On the Development of the Arabic Subjunctive David Testen

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III. Phonological Perspectives Arabic Segmental Errors and Segmental Phonology Sabah Safi-Stagni

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Rules of Phonology: Pre- or post-syllable structure? Basim Majdi & Millicent Winston

185

On Emphasis and /r/ in Arabic Munther Younes

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Index of Subjects

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FOREWORD

On March 6-8, 1992, the Sixth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics was held at The Ohio State University in Columbus. The symposium was sponsored by the Arabic Linguistics Society; The Ohio State University's College of Humanities, Departments of Judaic & Near Eastern Languages & Literatures, Spanish & Italian, and Linguistics, and its Centers for Middle Eastern Studies and for Medieval & Renaissance Studies; and by the University of Utah's College of Humanities and Department of Languages & Literature. A total of 26 papers were presented at the symposium. Of these, 11 are included in this volume. This program included a session devoted to Spanish-Arabic Linguistics in which the speakers were invited to address this topic. The rest of the papers presented were selected on the basis of an anonymous review of abstracts submitted to the Program Committee. The papers included in the volume have all been reviewed by the editors before their final acceptance for publication. Unless otherwise indicated in individual papers, the transcription system in the body of the papers follows the International Phonetic Alphabet, or standard equivalents. The Arabic emphatics, however, are represented by a dot underneath the symbol, and long vowels as sequences of two vowels. The transliteration of Arabic titles in the bibliographies follows accepted formats, with some simplification in the use of diacritics. We have allowed both ' and c for the hamza glottal stop as well as ' and c for the 'ayn (pharyngeal approximant), respectively. In quoted material we followed the original text. We would like to thank Greg Iverson and John McCarthy for reviewing papers for the volume. The preparation and printing of the final manuscript was done using facilities available at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. We would like to thank Fred Cadora, Chair, Department of Judaic & Near Eastern Languages & Literature at the Ohio State University for providing secretarial support for the

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preparation of papers from the Hispano-Arabic Linguistics session. We are grateful to Sandra Welch (Ohio State University) for typing those manuscripts and to Tessa Hauglid (University of Utah) for her editorial assistance.

INTRODUCTION Vicente Cantarino Mushira Eid Keith Walters

When planning for the 1992 annual meeting of the Arabic Linguistics Society began, it seemed appropriate to participate in the Quincentennial celebrations held at the Ohio State University (the host institution) with the inclusion of a theme underscoring the Arabic presence in the Iberian Peninsula. Although the year of 1492, with the fall of Granada, sealed the fate of the Andalusian culture as it had existed in the Peninsula for over seven centuries—and, in that sense, a celebration did not seem warranted or appropriate—its contributions to the history of the Peninsula and the persistence and vitality of its cultural heritage did amply justify its celebration. In fact, Arabic contributions to Andalusian culture and through it to the Western World in general had been decisive in shaping the emerging nations in the Peninsula for centuries to come. It is indeed difficult to conceive the modern history of European travels and discoveries without the Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) contributions, and these without the previous endeavors by Hispano-Arab scholars of Al-Andalus in the field of sciences, from mathematics and astronomy to their application to sea travel, and by Andalusian explorers and merchants with their long tradition of ventures and discoveries in sea journeys and travels. The specific aim of the Society—the study of the Arabic language within a modern linguistics framework—did not allow a presentation of the theme from a general perspective. Yet it more than justified the inclusion of a theme directly related to the Peninsular Arabic language to the point and beyond the fall of Granada. With this in mind, we offered five contributions by scholars noted for their interest in the Hispano-Arabic field, who offer their analysis of various aspects and problems in the study of the linguistic legacy peculiar to the HispanoArabic population. Scholars of all times have been aware of the many

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difficulties encountered in determining the peculiarities and characteristics of any spoken language. In the Peninsula and very early in the history of Arabic domination, the newly-converted population had shown a desire to adopt Arabic ways of life—in what Cantarino has called a conscious process of 'Arabization'—and thus to conform to the linguistic rules of literary Arabic. Thus, it is specially difficult to learn the nature and peculiarities of the peninsular speech patterns. This, however, has never deterred linguists from researching, on the one hand, the influence native languages of the Peninsula might have had on the Arabic learned by Andalusian new converts, and, on the other, the influence of Peninsular Arabic in the Romance language which after the Christian Reconquest had become predominant in the new society in the new kingdoms. The aim of the papers presented in Section I is not that of offering a general coverage of these two aspects of Romance and Arabic in the history of Arabic presence in the Iberian Peninsula. It is rather that of bringing to the attention of scholars the nature and importance of this particular field of study. The section begins with Professor Corriente's contribution: an analysis of the present state of Andalusian Arabic research, which also includes, as its title indicates, an evaluation of past studies and prospects for new ones. In his contribution, Professor Torreblanca complements some aspects of Professor Corriente's well-known work on Hispano-Arabic linguistics, adding his analysis of some noteworthy aspects in HispanoArabic historical phonology. Professor Monroe's topic approaches a different problem, which is as much linguistic in itself as it is literary. He addresses a still ongoing polemic in Hispano-Arabie linguistics as well as poetic literature: the popular poetry of the Hispano-Arabs, namely, the zajal, which is composed in the dialect rather than in a purified codified literary Arabic and its relation to both ends of the prosodie spectrum. He concludes that the zajal art, at least in the Quzmani corpus, is "an Ibero-Romance emperor dressed up in new fashionable Khalilian clothes". The analysis of Hispano-Arabie "as a form of Spanish deeply imbued with Arabic script, lexicon, syntax, and semantics", if only, alas!, at the level of the popular literature and the language of the Arabophone minority in the century following the fall of Granada, is the topic developed by Professor Lopez Morillas. Finally, Professor Cantarino's contribution, "From Spoken to Written Language and Back", is rather a caveat to any linguist who labors under the necessity of analyzing documents which were not meant to

INTRODUCTION

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be linguistic in nature, and reads Arabic texts written in Latin characters which were not used to reproduce 'foreign sounds'. Its importance lies in pointing to new avenues for linguistic research which incorporate cultural and social aspects into the analysis of language. The papers in this first section, besides their individual merits, all have the importance of representing basic aspects of the HispanoArabic linguistics and show prospects for new research. As such, they have not only accomplished the immediate purpose for which they had been solicited, but may have also opened new horizons for future research in this field. Continuing with the theme of Arabic in contact, the papers in Section II approach the topic by addressing contact situations at other times and locations. Al-Batal's paper, "Connectives in Arabic Diglossia", deals with a contemporary contact situation between two varieties of Arabic in Lebanon (Standard and Lebanese). It shows how in Lebanese discourses connectives have a complex functional role partly due to the multiglossic nature of the community—specifically, the interaction between Lebanese Arabic, Standard Arabic, and French—and to other socio-economic factors as, for example, education. The two other papers in this section, by Belnap & Gee and by Testen, address the topic from a more historical approach. Belnap & Gee's paper, "Classical Arabic in Contact", examines an expanded corpus of texts representing a number of genres and periods with a goal of understanding the development of NP agreement in Old Arabic in order to understand its relationship to modern varieties of spoken and written Arabic. Using quantitative methods, the authors trace the development of OA from a variety exhibiting largely strict agreement to one that permitted a considerable amount of deflected agreement. Drawing on research in sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and second language acquisition, they examine the likely role played in this shift by various substratum influences and the large number of second-language learners of Arabic. Testen's paper, "On The Development of the Arabic Subjunctive", is concerned with the historical development of the subjunctive mood in Arabic and the possibility of its being reconstructed as part of Proto-Semitic. In general a proto-form can be reconstructed as such only if there is evidence from other related languages to justify the reconstruction. The case of the Arabic subjunctive, Testen argues, appears to be contradict this general principle. Comparing Arabic cognates that may

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arguably be considered as subjunctive in other Semitic languages (Biblical Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Akkadian), Testen concludes that the evidence is not sufficient to justify the Proto-Semitic status given to the subjunctive and that the Arabic modal system represents its own unique historical development. The third and final section of the book includes three papers dealing with different aspects of Arabic phonology and their theoretical implications. The specific topics range from speech errors to emphasis as well as rule order. Safi-Stagni's paper, "Arabic Segmental Errors and Segmental Phonology", draws on earlier work by the author investigating the nature of slips of the tongue in Arabic. Safi-Stagni challenges the universality of the Syllable Position Constraint, which predicts the kinds of segmental speech errors speakers of a language are likely to make. The Arabic errors show that the coda can easily dissociate from the core and exchange freely with the onset, thus lending support to a flat representation of syllable structure, rather than the standard binary branching. But they also suggest that the processor must have access to the consonantal root prior to the association of vocalic pattern, thus lending support to current ideas of autosegmental phonology. Majdi & Winston's contribution to the volume addresses the question of the order of phonological rules relative to syllabification. Are phonological rules to be interpreted as presyllabic requirements, or are they motivated by syllable structure? They focus on sandhi rules in three Arabic dialects (Cairene, Iraqi, Tunisian) and argue that syllable structure is the proper domain of these rules which they show to be the result of the interaction between syllable structure and stress. Finally, Younes's paper, "On Emphasis and /r/ in Arabic", examines the emphatic status of /r/—a problem since /r/ patterns in some cases with the primary emphatics and in other cases with nonemphatics. Younes shows that it differs phonetically from the primary emphatics, and is more closely associated with backing in low vowels. He concludes that, in terms of emphasis, /r/ should be placed in a group by itself, distinct from both emphatic and nonemphatic consonants.

I

ARABIC IN CONTACT: THE HISPANO-ARABIC CONNECTION

CURRENT STATE OF RESEARCH IN THE FIELD OF ANDALUSI ARABIC: ACHIEVEMENTS AND PROSPECTS

Federico Corriente University of Zaragozza

When Professor Cantarino most kindly invited me, back in July 1990, to deliver a keynote speech during the Annual Symposium of the Arabic Linguistics Society, with a focus this year on HispanoArabic Linguistics, I must confess I had very mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was an undoubtable and not easily renounceable honor to be prompted by such a noteworthy scholar to address such a respectable assembly on such a solemn occasion; on the other hand, I had serious misgivings about my ability, as a short spectrum linguist, to raise the interest and deserve the attention of any sizable number of experts coming from the very wide range of scientific and teaching expertise subsumed under the heading of Arabic Linguistics. To make matters even worse, I had managed my personal affairs during the last two decades so badly and I had become involved in so many time-consuming endeavors that I had not had the time, in spite of the insistence of so many good friends and my own wishes, to cross the Atlantic again back to America even once since I finally left my academic position in Philadelphia in 1975 and settled in Spain; nor for that matter did I travel much to any other country for very long ever since, so that I had come to suffer a considerable loss of practice in spoken English, the very language in which my sons had me talk to them during our stay in the States. However, this latter difficulty did not seem to be an insurmountable one, as I could have my style corrected and my words

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conveyed to paper and then read them in front of a hopefully sympathetic gathering of English speaking colleagues. I was actually much more concerned about the kind of message I should select for this purpose, since the occasion demanded in a way that it should deal with key issues also; in other words, I gathered I was supposed to find something to say which, though connected with my present scholarly concern, namely Andalusi Arabic Linguistics, could appeal not only to those working on this and related areas of Arabic dialectology, but also to many other colleagues concerned with kindred aspects of Hispano-Arabic philology. This kind of thinking obliged me to delve deeply into my own past, experiences and memories in these fields, looking for something important enough to have been a turning point in my junior career as an incipient and exclusive researcher of Semitic linguistics, perhaps already at a loss to explain to my American students problems that can hardly be solved without prior studies on the particular members of the family. While following this mental path, all of a sudden I saw clearly what had stricken me one of those days and, curiously enough, I could and still can remember, even now when so many memories have faded away, and almost pinpoint the exact place where I was and the time of day when I was struck by an awareness of the fact that Hispano-Arabic studies rested on very shaky linguistic grounds and that an improved knowledge of Andalusi Arabic was urgently needed for any true advance in learning about nearly everything that took place in Western Islam between 711 A.D. and as late as the seventeenth century. That place was my former home in Springfield, Pennsylvania; the time must have been some evening in the fall of 1973, and the occasion was a book brought by me to the States some weeks before and written by a famous Spanish scholar, whose name does not really matter now, about an outstanding Andalusi poet, whose diwan, much talked about and celebrated, had never before been edited entirely on account of its many textual difficulties. That book bewildered me by being both a philological milestone and a linguistic disaster. Being rather young and too naive at the time, I could hardly dream of the consequences upon my upcoming life of that impression, which led me immediately to begin collecting materials for an essay on the features of Andalusi Arabic, in the hope that future scholars

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could be spared the barren efforts and dire pitfalls of further attempts at editing texts written in a language the grammar and lexicon of which had not been previously established. The outcome of that task was a book—blemished from its very inception by several shortcomings, drawn up in too much of a hurry and by now superseded on many points as a result of the research generated by it—which was issued in Madrid in 1977 under the title of A Grammatical Sketch of the Spanish Arabic Dialect Bundle. At the risk of sounding immodest, I cannot totally disagree with the distinguished scholars who reviewed it or made it into the object of their comments, among them, F. Gabrieli in Oriente Moderno 7 (1977): 385-6, J. Wansborough in BSOAS 41 (1978): 587-8, L. Drozdík in Asian and African Studies 16 (1980): 287-9, J. Monroe in his "Prolegomena to the study of Ibn Quzman" within the book El romancero hoy: Historia, Comparatismo, Madrid 1979:78, n. 4, etc. While pointing out some of its flaws, they generally acknowledged that it had succeeded in providing the backbone of the grammar of Andalusi Arabic and meant a clear-cut change in the trends of its study: as a matter of fact, it allowed the preparation and publication of new editions, in an altogether different linguistically minded garb, of Ibn Quzman's and Assustari's diiwaans and of the remaining main sources of this Neo-Arabic dialect within a theoretical frame which has not, to tell the whole truth, been thoroughly accepted by every scholar, but has at any rate outdated most of the previous tentative editions of those sources. From this viewpoint, it can be said that Andalusi Arabic studies can be parsed into two epochs, before and after the Sketch. Were it not for this fact, I very much doubt that I would be here now, although I must and do concede that I was just lucky enough, on account of my Spanish, Arabic, and American background, to be in the right spot at the right time for the idea and the means to turn it into a book to come my way and strike me, which was what actually happened. I guess I could not duck in time and, believe me, this little bit of success has hurt me already more than once. Having thus said enough, even too much, about my role in the quite recent change of course of Andalusi Arabic linguistics, mainly as a due explanation for my presence here, it is only befitting that I should mention the most salient studies consecrated to this field before

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and after 1977 for the benefit of those who might be led astray when trying to use or just peruse the bulky extant bibliography of very unequal value, as reflected, for example, by J. M. Fórneas, "Elementos para una bibliografía lingüística básica sobre Al-Andalus" in Actas de las Jornadas de cultura árabe e islámica (1978), Madrid 1976: 45-107, with over one thousand entries. I understand that the author is about to publish an updated reprint of that index, of which I have used the earlier version, with some additions and suppressions, as a basis of the bibliographical references of my forthcoming new book on Andalusi Arabic and its interaction with Romance. It stands to reason that work done on Andalusi Arabic linguistics by nineteenth century researchers such as F. J. Simonet1 can only retain historical value and has to be handled very cautiously on account of methodological inadequacies, in spite of so many bright discoveries, with perhaps the sole exception of Dozy's Supplément awx dictionnaires arabes2 and his and Engelmann's Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe.3 As for the twentieth century, one might expect that the years prior to 1977 could also be divided into two periods, before and after 1932, when A. Steiger published his important Contribución a lafonética del hispano-árabe y de los arabismos del ibero-románico y el siciliano in Madrid, where it has been very recently reissued without any editorial work. In spite of its being confined to phonetics, without even the benefit of a phonological approach which had begun at that time to be available, this book contains considerable methodological advances over the preceding epoch. However, it suffices to browse through the ensuing production to realize that Steiger's book received little attention and was paid mostly sheer lip service.

1Most particularly his Glosario de voces ibéricas y latinas usadas entre los mozarabes. Madrid, 1989 (reprinted in Amsterdam, 1965). 2 Published in Leiden, 1881, and reprinted without changes several times, quite often in Middle Eastern bootleg editions which bear witness to its unabated vogue and usefulness. 3 Published in Leiden in 1869 and reprinted in 1969. Both books, especially the former, though in need of some overhauling, still do good service and provide valuable lexical information not found elsewhere.

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This becomes evident upon comparing some interesting articles and books written by forerunners such as F. Codera4 and M. Alarcón5 with the etymological research of post-Steigerian scholars like M. Asín who, regardless of his merits on other fields, offers a dismal picture of shallowness, haste, distaste, and unconcern about linguistic issues. It is true that for the same period some other scholars like González Palencia, as source editor,6 and Oliver Asin, as discoverer of Arabic borrowings in Romance lexicon and place names7 fared somewhat better, while people from other countries like G. S. Colin, E. K. Neuvonen and A. R. Nykl carried out a huge amount of serious work on Andalusi Arabic linguistics which was continued in more recent times by E. Terés, W. Hoenerbach, R. Singer, P. Harvey, Alahwani, and Bencherifa. Although none of these authors ever provided a comprehensive outline of Andalusi Arabic, with the partial exception of Colin in the entry "Al-Andalus" of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, their editions and studies, even if they have now to be revised in the light of our present insights, paved the way towards further progresses and, above all, provoked fruitful discussions and evidenced the need for improved methods more in agreement with the advances simultaneously achieved by contemporary linguistic science. As for publications after 1977, it goes without saying that not everybody concerned with Andalusi Arabic linguistics has embraced all the opinions embedded in the Sketch, although its impact can be more or less deeply felt nearly everywhere. Within Spain, which has been and seems to remain for obvious reasons the country most concerned with this field, the tenets of Sketch are fully adopted, e.g., by the professors of the University of Cordova, Ana Labarta and Carmen Barceló, in their important contributions to the study of the

4

E.g., his paper, "Apodos o sobrenombres de moros espanoles" in Mélanges H. Derembourg, Paris 1909:323-34. 5 Cf. his "Carta de Abenaboo en arabe granadino" in Miscelánea de estudios y textos árabes, Madrid 1915:691-723. 6 Cf. his Los mozárabes de Toledo en los siglos XII y XIII, Madrid, 1926-30. 7 Cf. his many articles in the Boletín de la Real Academia Espanolaand the periodical Al-Andalus between 1928 and 1968.

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dialect of Valencia,8 as well as by the research team which I created at Madrid University for the purpose of re-editing Andalusi Arabic sources and surveying linguistic data retrievable from place names. At this point, I suppose that some people in this learned audience might feel like asking the following question: "Could you please, Sir, tell us what is so awfully important about Andalusi Arabic linguistics that its underdevelopment should invalidate or at least impair the results of so many outstanding scholars' previous work on text editing, etymologizing of Arabic loanwords in Romance and place names of the Iberian Peninsula, and generally question the seriousness of almost two centuries' work?" I shall try to answer that legitimate question by expounding the exact state of the art only fifteen years ago and by giving examples of the kind of mistakes that were incurred as a consequence thereof. In the realm of phonemics, there was no inventory or detailed description of the phonemes, segmental or suprasegmental, of Andalusi Arabic. Among other consequences of that situation, the unawareness of the substitution of stress-based rhythm for the quantitative prosody of Old Arabic led many scholars to untenable positions when trying to understand and explain the metrics of muwaššah and zajal. I am aware that in some milieux the mere mention of this topic can make some people look daggers at the fool who rushed in where angels fear to tread, but nevertheless it is a good example which I cannot forsake. In the realm of morphology, in the lack of a closed list of Andalusi Arabic morphemes, it is common to find classicizing, allogenous Neo-Arabic and hybrid forms posited instead of genuine Andalusi Arabic stock in practically all edited texts and studies. This has caused a lot of wrong etymologizing, since some people thought that in the absence of certainty anything was possible. As a tell-tale example of such attitudes we can mention the widely accepted etymon of Castilian ojalá "would that" supposedly from Arabic */wa sä' allah/, which never existed nor can exist in that meaning, instead of llaw šá+lláh/, with a mere and very common 8 Cf. Ana Labarta's paper "Algunos aspectos del dialecto árabe valenciano en el siglo XVI" in Actos de las II Jornadas de Cultura 'Arabe e Islámica, Madrid, 281-315, and Carmen Barceló's book Minorías islámicas en país valenciano, Madrid-Valencia, 1984.

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phenomenon of haplology. Curiously enough, in the presence of Andalusi Arabic words with Romance suffixes, a very frequent situation, neither Arabic nor Romance scholarship of that epoch was able to handle the situation appropriately.9 Needless to say, syntax was very seldom brought under consideration at that stage, and when it was it was generally assumed that Andalusi Arabic syntactic patterns must have been very close to those of Classical Arabic. This led some scholars to claim, for example, that certain texts were just poor macaronic translation from Romance on account of the peculiar use of the definite article in them, when in fact, syntagms like masjíd alaxdár "the green mosque" or alwalád ziná "the bastard" fit perfectly into the frame of some Old and Neo-Arabic dialects and ought not to be construed as substratal. The same can be said about certain hypotheses of Arabic interference with Hispanic syntax, like the widespread belief that syntagms such as, Spanish burla burlando "in a joking manner" do reflect Semitic paranomasia, something highly unlikely, as Semitic in general and most particularly Andalusi Arabic possess no gerund of this kind, and even the internal object of Classical Arabic is not favored by Andalusi Arabic. By this I do not, of course, mean that the Romance substratum did not have very noticeable effects upon Andalusi Arabic, but it just happened that the instances selected to prove that point were not the right cases. The realm of lexicon and semantics had become the happy hunting grounds of would-be etymologists who could at will either unearth far-fetched etyma from the huge Eastern dictionaries of Classical Arabic, as if every item in them had necessarily been in use in AlAndalus, or put forward unlikely semantic junctures or evolutions. Examples of the former are Dozy's etymon, sustained by an otherwise immensely respectable Corominas, for Castilian almoceda "watering turn" supposedly from a rare almusdà "the given (right)" instead of a commoner almuqsíta "the fair (portion)", or Corominas' really picturesque etymon for Castilian fideos "vermicelli", supposedly from 9

I have listed over twenty such suffixes in "Algunos sufijos derivativos romances en mozárabe y en los arabismos hispánicos" in Aula Orientalis 1(1983): 55-60, and I have written a stil] unpublished paper in which I demonstrate that the Arabic root exhibiting the largest Romance offspring, namely [hdr], has passed unnoticed heretofore, on account of its almost constant adjunction of those suffixes.

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yifid "it boils over", because that is what happens when they are cooked (!), instead of its right Romance origin common with that of Italian fettuccia. Brazen inventions of this kind are sometimes passed off as legitimate witnesses to Romance-Arabic symbiosis in AlAndalus, and in this way, for example, many scholars have been led to believe by the prestige of self-appointed experts in nearly nonexistent Andalusi Arabic linguistics that Castilian hidalgo and Portuguese fidalgo are a chalque of banu l'axmas, and the same is said of infante with respect to walad, although both Arabic expressions never had the meanings posited by the daring authors of such hypotheses subsequently turned into basic facts of a wider theory of Semitic substratum in Hispanic culture. Let me be perfectly clear about this: again I do not reject that substratum, or perhaps to be more accurate, adstratum, but there was and is no need to prop that correct theory with such flimsy arguments: a study of Spanish proverbs, very often patterned after or even simply translated from Arabic models, as proven by Garcia Gomez10 or the discovery of the true etyma of so many unknown Arabic borrowings in the Romance Iberian languages would have served that purpose much better.11 Summing up, the lack of exact data about Andalusi Arabic not only has generated a host of misapprehensions in the study of its interaction with Romance Iberian languages and a lot of mistakes in the etyma of a sizeable share of their lexica, but has as well hindered progress towards a correct definition of some literary issues of great concern to the whole West, Muslim and Christian alike, as in the case of the background, origin, and evolution of stanzaic poetry in AlAndalus. Furthermore, it has even acted as a distorting element at the hands of some historians who could, under better circumstances, have

10 See, among other contributions of this author most particularly successful along this line, his paper "Una prueba de que el refranero árabe fue incorporado en traduction al español" in Al-Andalus 42 (1977): 375-90. 11E.g., Castilian talante ( [ee] took place, [ee] existed in HispAr only as an allophone of /ii/ in contact with pharyngeal, velarized and pharyngealized consonants. Therefore it was relatively easy to keep [se] and [ee] graphically apart. But once OAr /aa/ went from [ee] to [ee] in Imala-contours, it created

ON HISPANO-ARABIC HISTORICAL PHONOLOGY

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some orthographic difficulties, especially for bilingual writers who traditionaly had represented HispRom stressed /e/ by Ar {ii}. At some point in its history, OAr /aa/ and even /a/ evolved to a sound that HispRom speakers associated with their phoneme /i/: Cat sínia (< OAr /al-saaniya/), Sp albañil (< OAr /alPort and OldSp aziche (< OAr /alPort azeviche (< OAr /aiSp adoquín (< OAr /ai-dukkan/), Sp atifle (< OAr /alSp arrequife (< OAr /alrikaab/)

Tallgren (1925:708, 741) and Neuvonen (1941:218, n. 3) thought that the last stage of the Imala process in HispAr took place after the thirteenth century, while Corriente (1977:24) believed that it existed several centuries earlier. Though Corriente's opinion is rather extreme, the stage [ii] for OAr /aa/ started before the year 1300, not in the Central but in the Southern region of the Iberian Peninsula, even in words where the palatalization was not induced by the vicinity of /i/. The loanword albanni(s) (< /al-banaa?/) is found in a Castilian document of 1268 from Andalusia; in different copies of the Primera Cronica General, we have albanne & albaňi & albaňir; in the Gran Conquista de Ultramar, the Romance plural form is albannies (Neuvonen 1941:218). Though the last two works were originally written in Toledo in the second half of the thirteenth century, albaňi & albaňir & albannies come only from fourteenth century copies. The Old Castilian form albanne coincides with Medieval Portuguese alvane & alvanela, Modern Portuguese alvanel & alvaner (Machado 1967:I, 218). Most likely, Old Castilian albanne was borrowed from Toledan Arabic, while albaňi was originally a Mozarabic term from Andalusia which displaced albanne even in Toledo in the fourteenth century. I have no means to determine exactly when the evolution OAr /aa/ > [ii] started in Southern HispAr. It certainly did not exist in Seville in 1100. Since by that time the evolution [ee] > [ee] may not have even started, I suppose that the chronology of this sound change was about the same for Toledan and Southern HispAr: twelfth century. The next phonetic stage, [ii], probably started in the following century.

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2. Semitic /g/ and /p/, Arabic /j/ and /f/. At some time in its history, the Sem(itic) phoneme /g/ evolved to /j/, and /p/ to /f/ in Arabic. As Steiger (1932:56, 184-85) and Corriente (1977:51) observed, the evolution /g/ > / j / was not yet over when the Muslims arrived in the the Iberian Peninsula at the beginning of the eighth century, though its completion might not have gone much beyond this time. The HispLat(in) river or place-names TAGU(S), GALLAECIA, TURGALIU(M) and URGANONE became /taajuh/, /jalliiqiyya/, /turjaaluh/ and /arjunah/ in HispAr. In other place-names, HispLat [g] became /q/ in HispAr: GADES > /qaadis/, IGABRU(M) > /qabra/, CAESAR AUGUSTA > /saraqusta/. In a case like GADES > /qaadis/, the Arabic phoneme acoustically more similar to Latin [g], an unaspirated velar stop consonant, was /q/. But in TAGU(S) > /taajuh/, Sem /g/ was still maintained, evolving later to /j/. The different results of HispLat [g] in HispAr should be understood not in absolute chronological terms, but rather as reflexes of a relative chronology: the period when a HispLat word was integrated or assimilated into Arabic. In Standard HispAr, the normal reflex of Sem /p/ was /f/, and HispRom /p/ was systematically transcribed by {b} or {bb}, the latter in intervocalic position. Corriente (1977:34, n. 31) gathered some data which seem to imply, though he did not say so explicitly, that the change Sem /p/ > Ar /f/ was still in progress, or not yet completed, when the Muslims first came to the Iberian Peninsula. In HispAr documents from the tenth and eleventh centuries, there are some cases of Arabic {f} and {ff} transcribing HispLat or HispRom /p/: {ftrš} Petrus, {fwluuš} Paulus, {fblw} Pablo, {jfryaan} Ciprian, {ffaalliyuuš} pallios "mantles", {ffatiina} & {batiina} "paten", {faaraaqliit} & {baaraaqliit} "Paraclete", {ffaatriyaarj} & {baatriyaarj} "patriarch", {ffirmaat} "primate"

For Corriente, transcriptions like {ffatiina} and {batiina} reflect "different stages of the evolution in OAr dialects to substitute [f] for [(J)]." I am not sure what he means by this. Though it is true that the first result of the spirantization of Sem /p/ in Arabic should have been [(j)], neither in Arabic nor in Latin or Hispano-Romance, was there ever a phonemic distinction between /f/ and /Φ/. Therefore, it seems

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very unlikely that HispAr writers could acoustically distinguish [f] from [Φ]. Moreover, there must be some explanation for the noncanonical use of {ff} at word-initial position, since no Arabic word may start with a long consonant. The modern place-name Aspe (< Lat ASPI[S]) in Southeastern Spain became /pasf/ in HispAr (Torreblanca 1982:456). In Modern HispRom, there are a couple of words from Latin origin where Lat /p/ evolved to /f/ through Arabic: PALLIOLUM > Sp ferreruelo "small mantle"; FLECTA > Cat fleitera "mold for making cheese" (Corominas 1954-57:II, 512). There are also a couple of cases where HispRom /p/ corresponds to Ar /f/: Ar /Pisfaanaax/, Cat espinac, Sp espinaca, Port espinafre "spinach"; Ar /al-faqquus/, Sp alficoz & alpicoz, Cat alficôs & alpicôs "a kind of cucumber". According to Corominas (1954-57:1, 116) alpicoz and alficoz come from a "hypercorrected" Mozarabic form derived from Ar /al-faqquus/. Given the fact that in Mozarabic, the Romance language spoken in Muslim Spain, there was a phonemic distinction inherited from Latin between /p/ and /f/, I am at a loss to comprehend what Corominas meant by "hypercorrection" in relation to Valencian (or Southern Catalan) alpicôs and Southeastern Castilian alpicoz. It is true that both have a Levantine Mozarabic origin, but I cannot understand why /f/ would change to /p/ in Levantine Mozarabic. On the other hand, Corominas (1954-57:II, 394) stated that HispRom espinac & espinaca & espinafre must come from Early HispAr/Pispinaax/, which had a Persian origin (/ispaanaax/). Leaving aside the question of the pretonic vowel in the ninth century HispAr form {Pisfinaax} mentioned by Corominas, it is very likely that the grapheme {f} represented here is not Classical Arabic /f/, but Preclassical /p/. The Modern HispRom reflexes of {Pisfinaax} certainly support this interpretation. Since the Arabic-speaking people who came to the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century still maintained the Semitic phoneme /p/, we should assume this situation not only for HispRom espinac & espinaca & espinafre, but also for alpicôs & alpicoz. The HispRom forms alficôs & alficoz, as well as ferreruelo & fleitera illustrate the evolution /p/ > /f/ in HispAr. In Modern Moroccan Arabic /b/, but not /bb/, normally becomes [ß] if not preceded by /m/ (Cantineau 1941:30). Since the spirantization process is caused by lenition, it should happen last when the bilabial stop is long, given its greater tension or articulatory

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effort. The stop articulation should remain longer after a consonant than after a vowel, especially if the preceding consonant is a nasal. In the case of the homorganic cluster /mb/, the nasal consonant influences the following stop consonant, preventing or delaying its spirantization. The relative chronology of the sound change /p/ > HI in HispAr depended probably on length and the phonological environment. In 1049, a Mozarabic priest named Vincentius translated a Latin text into Arabic (Simonet 1967:xiv). Sometimes he simply transcribed a Latin word, or rather its HispRom counterpart, in the Arabic alphabet. All the examples of Arabic {ff} for Latin or Romance /p/ mentioned by Corriente, and which happen to be at word-initial position, come from this document. For HispRom /pa'tena/, Vincentius wrote {ffatiina} and {batiinaj. Both transcriptions indicate that the change Sem /p/ > HispAr /f/ was already over at word-initial position. Otherwise, Vincentius would have just written {f}. If he wanted to respect the Arabic word structure and indicate that HispAr /p/ was a stop consonant, his best choice was 'b' within the Arabic grapho-phonemic system. On the other hand, Vincentius' translation was done for Mozarabic Christians who could read and speak Arabic but who also spoke Romance. If he wanted to show them graphically that HispRom /p/ was not a stop voiced consonant represented in Arabic by {b} or an unvoiced fricative written {f} at word-initial position, but an unvoiced stop consonant, his best choice was {ff}, since this grapheme still represented an unvoiced stop consonant in Arabic words, though only in intervocalic position. A bilingual reader should not have had much of a problem in relating the Arabic grapheme {ff} to the HispRom phoneme /p/. 3. The phonemes It/ and /q/ There has been wide disagreement, and a lot of confusion on the pronunciation or evolution of /t/ and /q/ in HispAr. For Griffin (1958:306-310) /t/ and/q/ were always unvoiced consonants. According to Galmés (1977:201, 274-84) both were fully voiced until the beginning of the fourteenth century, and later devoiced. For Neuvonen (1941:286-87, 288-90) It/ was always unvoiced, while/q/ was most frequently unvoiced, though it may have been voiced sometimes, at an early period. Steiger (1932:149-60, 208-18) thought that l\l was normally unvoiced, though it may have been voiced

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sporadically; in the case of /q/, the unvoiced articulation was the most frequent, but this phoneme was also voiced sometimes in HispAr. Corriente's (1977:39-40, 53-54) statements on the pronunciation of/t/ and /q/ are about the same as Steiger's. Corriente also suggested the possibility that /t/ and /q/ were partially voiced in HispAr, with voicing affecting only the last part of the phoneme. Some years ago (1986), I studied the Arabic transcriptions of HispLat /p, t, k/ as a means of determining their original pronunciation. Though I investigated in detail the pronunciation of l\l in HispAr with relation to the feature [voice], I did not pay much attention to /q/ since its alleged voiced or unvoiced articulation was not relevant to my study. Now, I would like to do precisely the opposite. According to Corriente (1978), the Arabic graphemes representing /t/ and /k/ were not used to transcribe HispRom /t/ and /k/, since the former were aspirated and the latter were not. For HispRom [t] and [k], Arabic writers used only {t} and {q}, since those graphemes represented unaspirated stop consonants in Arabic. They could also transcribe fully or partially voiced HispRom consonants. The double graphic function performed by {t} and {q} was possible because l\l and /q/ were (for Corriente) both fully unvoiced and voiced, or partially voiced in HispAr. Corriente's statements need some clarifications and corrections. Though it is widely believed that /p, t, k/ are unaspirated in Modern Spanish, we have spectrographic evidence of their being pronounced as aspirated stops, usually in slow or emphatic (energetic) speech, and after pauses (Torreblanca 1976:124-26; 1983). The purpose of my paper of 1986 was, precisely, to find out through Arabic whether or not the present-day aspirated pronunciation of Spanish /p, t, k/ existed in the Middle Ages. Corriente (1978) claimed that in the voicing process of Latin postvocalic /p, t, k/ in HispRom, there was an intermediate stage where voicing affected only the last part of the consonant. Sometimes history repeats itself. In Modern Colloquial Castilian /p, t, k/ may be partially or fully voiced in intervocalic position. When the voicing is partial, which occurs quite often, it affects only the first part of the consonant, and not the coda (Torreblanca 1976). I have no reason to believe that the partial voicing of Latin /p, t, k/ in the Middle Ages, if that was the case, would have been any different. There is absolutely

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no way to prove that /t/ and /q/ were partially voiced in HispAr. Since neither in Arabic nor in Romance was there a phonemic opposition between fully unvoiced and partially voiced consonants, the degree of voicing would have been unnoticed, as is the case today for Modern Spanish. For the purpose of discussion, I am only considering the possibility that /t/ and /q/ were either fully unvoiced or fully voiced in HispAr. In spite of Corriente's (1978) remarks, the Arabic graphemes for the aspirated stop phonemes /t/ and /k/ were used in transcribing HispRom lil and /k/. As a matter of fact, Arabic {t} and {k} normally transcribed Latin or HispRom /t/ and /k/ when they happened after a consonant, and also when they were long (Latin /tt/ and/kk/). At word-initial position, the HispRom reflexes of Latin /t/ and /k/ were rendered by Arabic {t} and {k}, {t} and {q} (more frequently). After a vowel in the middle of the word, {t} and {k} appeared very seldom; {t} and {q} were frequent; {d}, {ð} and {R} were used sometimes (Meyer-Lübke 1924; Griffin 1958:298-325; MenéndezPidal 1968:254-56; Galmés 1977:275-81; Torreblanca 1986). The Anonymous of Seville showed a great interest in HispRom linguistic variation. For instance, he indicated that the HispRom word spelled cominos "cumins" in Modern Spanish was pronounced {qumiinuš} and {kumiinuš}; for gota "drop", he registered as phonetic variants {qutta} and {Rutta}; for cardacho "thistle," {qardaajuh} and {qaröaajuh}; for e stopa "burlap," {ištubba} and {ištubba}; for pisto "vegetable cutlet," {bištuh} and {bištuh} (Asín 1943:66, 82, 117, 136, 232). Latin [d] preceded by /r/ evolved to [8] in HispRom. The transcriptions {qardaajuh} and {qarðaajuh} reflect that sound change as being in progress. In Modern Spanish, /g/ in gota is realized as [g] or [γ], depending on the preceding sound. Although [γ] might not have occurred as frequently as in present-day Spanish, the HispRom allophonic variation [g]:[γ] already existed in Seville in 1100, according to the transcriptions {qutta} and {Rutta}. The transcriptions {qumiinuš} and {kumiinuš} will be dealt with later. For HispRom estopa and pisto the Anonymous of Seville registered the phonetic variants {ištubba} and {ištubba}, {bištuh} and {bištuh}. What was the phonetic difference he tried to convey? Taking into account everything that has been said about the pronunciation of /t/ and lil in HispAr, I can only think of three possibilities: (a) the

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Anonymous of Seville meant a difference between a nonpharyngealized and a pharyngealized dental consonant; (b) the difference was simply between an unvoiced and a voiced consonant; (c) the grapheme {t} represented a Romance aspirated and unvoiced stop consonant; {t}, an unaspirated and unvoiced stop consonant. We should dismiss (a) on various grounds. In present times, no Romance language has pharyngealized consonants. There is no internal evidence, as reflected in the evolution of vowels, that they have ever existed. Pharyngealization and palatalization are two incompatible phonetic situations. The palatalization of Latin /k/ before front vowels proves that at least in this environment /k/ was not a pharyngealized consonant in HispRom, or in other Romance languages. Arabic transcriptions of the HispRom reflexes of /t/ and /k/ show a variation conditioned by length and the phonological environment. If we were to believe that {t} transcribed an Old Hispano-Romance pharyngealized consonant, we should then be able to explain how it disappeared, and also explain how its nonpharyngealized counterpart came about. For instance, the Anonymous of Seville wrote {qutta} and {Rutta} for the HispRom reflexes of Latin GUTTA4; for DIGITOS, he registered {diituš} (Asín 1943:94). If originally HispLat /tt/ and /t/ had exactly the same pronunciation except for length, that pronunciation should have been the one transcribed for /tt/ by the Anonymous of Seville, and not the other way around: Latin long stops were shortened in HispRom. Though HispRom /t/ and/k/ were usually transcribed by Ar {t} and {k} in Arabic when they happened after another consonant, there are some exceptions. The first ones happened after /s/. The oldest Arabic transcription I know of for the Hispano-Roman place-name CAESAR AUGUSTA is from the ninth century, {saraqusta}; in later documents, {saraqusta} and {saraqusta}. The present-day place-name Huesca, in Northern Spain, was transcribed {waska} by an Arab geographer in the tenth century, and {wašqa} by another in the twelfth (Torreblanca 1982:450, 461; 1986:24). When the Anonymous of Seville observed that the HispRom word pisto was pronounced {bištuh} and {bištuh}, he was simply recording a Romance sound change, from a consonant 4

Latin words are written in small caps to differentiate them from Romance words (in italics).

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written {t} to another written {t}. The last one is the same found in the normal pronunciation of pisto in Modern Spanish, a stop consonant which is certainly not pharyngealized. We can easily dismiss the possibility (b). There is no present-day evidence that Latin /t/ was voiced after consonants in Mozarabic. The absence of voicing of Latin /t/ at this position is, of course, the norm in all Romance languages. If, in spite of everything, we wished to speculate that the Mozarabic dialect spoken in Seville in 1100 was an extremely rare exception, the Anonymous of Seville would not have used the Arabic grapheme "t" to transcribe a Romance voiced dental stop. There is not a thread of solid evidence to support the claim that l\l ever was a voiced phoneme in HispAr; the evidence to the contrary is simply overwhelming and unequivocal (Torreblanca 1986). The Anonymous of Seville associated HispRom [d] with Arabic /d/, a fact not difficult to understand since they were articulatorily and acoustically identical. Earlier we saw how accurately he distinguished HispRom [d] and [ð]: {qardaajuh} and {qarðaajuh} cardacho. Another example from the Anonymous of Seville shows Arabic {d} and {t} and even {t} in the transcription of a HispRom noun phrase:5 {jintu diituš}, Classical Latin CENTUM DIGITOS, Late Latin /'kεntu 'detos/, Modern Spanish ciert dedos "hundred fingers" (Asin:1943, 94). If in this instance Latin intervocalic /t/ had been voiced in the Mozarabic dialect from Seville, the Arabic transcription should have been certainly {d}, as in the case of Lat lál in word-initial position. In {jintu diituš}, the Romance reflex of Latin /t/ is transcribed by {t} between vowels, and {t} after a consonant. The last transcription is standard in the Anonymous of Seville, though there are a few exceptions, dutifully recorded, where Latin /t/ is transcribed by both {t} and {t} after a sibilant consonant: {ištubba} & {ištubba}; {bištuh} & {bištuh}. On both occasions, the Anonymous of Seville had in mind a distinction between an aspirated and an unaspirated unvoiced dental consonant. With his transcriptions, he was simply reflecting a HispRom sound change from the aspirated to the unaspirated consonant. The Anonymous of Seville specified that the HispRom word cominos was pronounced {qumiinuš} as well as {kumiinuš}. In the 5

For more examples in other HispAr documents, see Torreblanca 1986:11-12

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first transcription, Arabic {q} stands for an unaspirated stop consonant; in the second transcription, {k} represents an aspirated stop. We cannot know from these transcriptions whether the Romance consonants were unvoiced or voiced, since the Arabic alphabet had no means to reflect such a difference. For our present purpose, that difficulty does not matter at all. The problem comes when we try to determine the articulation of HispAr /q/ in relation to voice. Once the change from Semitic /g/ to Arabic /j/ was completed, non-Arabic unaspirated [k] and [g] were rendered by /q/ in Arabic, in the Orient (Blanc 1969:20) as well as in the Iberian Peninsula (Torreblanca 1986:10-11). This fact should be taken into account while investigating the pronunciation or history of /q/ in HispAr. The Hispano-Roman place-names GADES, IGABRU(M) and CAESAR AUGUSTA became /qaadis/, /qabra/ and /saraqusta/ in HispAr, whence Modern Spanish Cádiz, Cabra and Zaragoza. For Steiger (1932:56) and Corriente (1978:216), the evolution of those place-names proved that /q/ was originally a voiced consonant in HispAr, though it was later devoiced. I do not share their opinion. As a matter of fact, those Arabic and Romance forms may be interpreted as proof that /q/ was always an unvoiced consonant in HispAr. We could simply assume a linguistic situation when Semitic /g/ had already evolved to /j/, so that /q/, being an unaspirated and unvoiced stop consonant, was the only choice left to reproduce a foreign unaspirated and voiced stop. The best place and time to study the pronunciation of /q/ in Medieval HispAr is Toledo in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the Castilian transcriptions of the Arabic names for stars from the Libros del Saber de Astronomía, Arabic /q/ is always rendered by /k/ in Castilian: /al-qidr/ alqueder & queder "the pot", /al-raqiib/ arraqueb Sc elraquib & arraquib "the guardian", /al-qaws/ alcauç & elcauç & elcauz & alcauz "the arch", /al-Saqrab/ elaacrab & alaacrab & alacrab "Scorpio", /qalb/ calb "heart", /qantuuris/ cantorez & canîoriz "Centaurus", etc. (Tallgren 1925:668-703)

In Toledan-Arabic documents with footnotes or additions written in Latin or Romance, there are several instances of Arabic {q} for Latin or Romance /k/:

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{alqardiit} & {alqardiit} & {alqarðaat}, Alcardet & Alkarded; {šant niquulaaš}, San Nicolas; {quraal rubyuh}, Corral Ruvio & Corral Rubio; {furqaajuh}, Forcaio; {manzil mušqa}, Menzel Mosca; {qaraašqaal}, Carrascal; etc. (González-Palencia 1926-30:I, 3-9, 56, 266-67, 292; II, 3, 273; III, 7, 15-16, 200-201, 479; IV:285)

Nevertheless, Arabic {q} could also transcribe Latin or Romance [g]: {luunquh} < Lat LONGU; {lunqa} < Lat LONGA; {duun burqunyuun}, don Borgoñon; {rubaart ði la qaaliya} < "Robert de la Galia" (González-Palencia 1926-30:I, 151, 161, 262; II, 3-7; III, 38, 487). There is no doubt that /q/ was an unvoiced consonant in ToledanArabic, but the Arabic alphabet simply could not differentiate unvoiced and voiced stops if they were unaspirated. The authors of those Toledan-Arabic documents were probably bilingual Christians, and most likely had no problem in keeping apart Romance [g] and [k] in the oral language. But the situation was different at an earlier time with monolingual Arabic speakers. Lacking /g/ in their phonemic inventory, they substituted non-Arabic /g/ by Arabic /q/. This is how Latin GADES became first /qaadis/ in HispAr, and later Cádiç in Medieval Castilian. Based on Medieval Spanish words of Arabic origin, Neuvonen (1941:288-90) came to the conclusion that /q/ was usually an unvoiced consonant in HispAr, although it may have had a voiced articulation sometimes, at an early period. He found that at word-initial position or after a consonant, /q/ was consistently rendered by /k/ in Medieval Spanish, except for three cases: /al-qutun/ "cotton" > algodón, /marquun/ "embroidered" > margomar, /al-silqa/ "chard" > acelga. Those forms do not prove that there ever was a voiced /q/ in HispAr itself. As a rule, Latin /p, t, k/ evolved to /b, d, g/ in HispRom only at postvocalic position in the middle of a word. But there are several cases where /k/ changed to /g/ at word-initial position and also after a consonant: CAMELLA > Sp gamella "feed trough"; CARBA > Sp garabato "scrawl", CARRO > Sp garrucha & carrucha "pulley", CARCIA > Sp garza "heron", CATTU > Sp gato "cat"; COLUPU > Sp golpe "blow"; CRASSU > Sp graso "fatty"; CREPTA > Sp grieta "crack"; CURCULIU > Sp gorgojo "weevil"; EXQUINTIARE > Sp esguince "dodge"; MUSCU > Sp musgo "moss";

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QUIRITARE > Sp gritar "to shout"; SQUILLA > Sp esquila & esguila "cowbell"; etc. We have at least two Spanish words of Arabic origin where Arabic /k/ changed to /g/ at word-initial position: /kiitaara/ "guitar" > guitarra (Corominas 1954-57:II, 845); /kummiyya/ "a curved knife" > gwnía (Corominas 1954-57:II, 851; Dozy-Engelmann 1965:282). It is true that in algodón, margomar and acelga OAr /q/ became /g/ in Spanish, but the voicing took place in Spanish, not in Hispano-Arabic.6 In Alcala's Vocabulista arauigo en letra castellana, Arabic /q/ is very consistently transcribed by graphemes which represent /k/ in Castilian (Steiger 1932:208-217; Corriente 1977:53), even in words which have /g/ in Modern Spanish: cotón vs 'algodon', célque vs 'acelga' (Lagarde 1883:92-98). After a rather careful search in Alcalá's Vocabulista, Corriente (1977:53) succeeded in gathering a few cases of Castilian g for Arabic /q/: 'areo' cáuz & goç "bow"; 'frechero' rámi bal góç "archer"; 'asombrar' nagdir agdárt "to stun" vs 'asombrado' maqdúr "stunned"; 'escudilla' guidar& pl agdíra "bowl"; 'gancho de pastor' & 'garabato' mugtáf & pl magátif "shepherd's hook"; 'pinón' guitiméra & pi gatímir "pine seed"; 'soltar' nalguí alguéit alguí "to let go." A few years ago Corriente (1988) published Alcalá's CastilianArabic dictionary in the reverse order, from Arabic to Castilian. In the Introduction [i-x], Corriente observed that Alcalá's knowledge of Arabic was somewhat deficient. Moreover, the Castilian graphophonemic system interfered in Alcalá's transcriptions of Arabic words. Some Arabic forms cannot be understood or explained unless we admit Romance influence on Arabic. Corriente's edition of Alcalá's Arabic Vocabulary was immediately followed by an article by him (1989), where he added some remarks on the HispAr lexicon gathered by Alcalá. In this article nothing new is said about the pronunciation of /q/ in HispAr, but he mentioned (1989:418) a rather interesting case of apparent voicing of /k/ at syllable-initial position: 'daga' guarguía (< /warkiyya/) "dagger". Corriente explained guarguía as a case of voice-assimilation of /k/ to the preceeding 6

I plan to study those words in detail on another occasion, as examples of the HispRom change /k/ > /g/ after consonants and at the beginning of words.

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sonorant, if we can exclude the possibility that Alcalá's ears did not fail him at that time ("si pudiéramos excluir imperfecta percepción del oído del autor"). Were we to doubt Alcalás hearing abilities, our knowledge of HispAr pronunciation would be greatly diminished. Since in Medieval Castilian, as in Modern Spanish, there was no phonemic distinction between voiced and unvoiced obstruents at syllable-final and word-final positions, we should not trust Alcalá's transcriptions of Arabic obstruents at those positions in relation to voice, but this is not the case with guarguia. Here we could think of another possibility. As Corriente (1988:i) observed, Alcalá's work was finished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but was "corrected" and printed at the end of the century. In Castilian the graphemes g and q are very similar (Corriente 1988:ii). It might be possible that Alcalá originally wrote guarquia, a form which was later changed to guarguia. If we were to accept this explanation, we should also proceed in the same manner with guidar & guitiméra and nalguí & alguéit & alguí, but we cannot be certain that they are all scribal or typographical errors. In any event, we have at least three cases where the possibility of graphic confusion in sixteenth century Castilian seems to be minimal. The form goç appeared twice for Ar /qaws/. Though we may question the phonetic value of g in the singular forms mugtaf (< /muqtaf/) and guitiméra (< /qitmira/), we should assume that this grapheme stands for a consonant acoustically similar to Castilian /g/ in their plural counterparts magátif (< /maqatif/) and gatímir (< /qataamir/). As equivalent to Castilian arco "bow" or frecha (flecha) "arrow", Alcalá gave two Arabic forms: 'arco de edificio', cáuç; 'arco del cielo', cáuz; 'areo para tirar', cáuç; 'arco assi', cáuz & goç; 'arquero que tira', cavaç; 'frecha', cáuç; 'frechero assi', rami bal goç (Lagarde 1883:104, 255). In Alcalá's Vocabulary, the most frequent Castilian transliteration of OAr /qaws/ is cáuç & cáuz, though goç is also found. The difference between cáuç, cáuz and goç is not only the apparent voicing of /q/, but also the evolution of [aw] to [o]. The Castilian transcriptions of OAr /qaws/ in Libros del Saber de Astronomia never reflect the evolution [aw] > [o], nor the voicing of /q/: (al)cauç & (el)cauç & (el)cauz & (al)cauz (Tallgren 1925:692). In the present paper, I cannot devote any time to the evolution of OAr diphthongs in HispAr, but there is no doubt that the Castilian transcriptions of

ON HISPANO-ARABIC HISTORICAL PHONOLOGY

61

/qaws/ in Libros del Saber de Astronomia represent the traditional pronunciation of this word in HispAr, while Alcalá's goç reflects an innovation. In Alcalá's work there are many words of Arabic origin whose grapho-phonological shapes reflect Romance influence, such as hambl "pregnancy" for /haml/ (Corriente 1988:v, 50), and xírxem "head's swelling" for /sirsaam/, with /s/ > HI (Corriente 1977:49, 1988:v, 106-107, 1989:418; Torreblanca 1982). The apparent voicing of Arabic /q/ in Alcalá's goç should be attributed to Romance influence. In some Modern Arabic dialects /q/ is normally unvoiced, while it is voiced in others. Hispano-Arabic always belonged to the first group.

REFERENCES Alcalá, Pedro de. 1505. Arte para ligeramente saber la lengua arauiga & Vocabulista arauigo en letra castellana. Lagarde 1883. Asín, Miguel. 1943. Glosario de voces romances registradas por un botánico hispano-musulmán(siglos XI-XII). Madrid: C.S.I.C. Blanc, H. 1969. "The Fronting of Semitic g and the qal-gal Dialect Split in Arabic". Proceedings of the International Conference on Semitic Studies, 7-37. Jerusalem: The Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Cantineau, Jean. 1941. Cours de phonétique arabe. Alger: G. Milion. Corominas, Juan. 1954-57. Diccionaro crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana. Berna: Francke. 4 vols. Corriente, Federico. 1977. A Grammatical Sketch of the Spanish Arabic Dialect Bundle. Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura. . 1978. "Los fonemas /p/, /Č7 y /g/ en hispanoárabe". Vox Romanica 37:21418. . 1988. El léxico árabe andalusí según P. de Alcalá. Madrid: Universidad de Madrid. . 1989. "Notas adicionales a la edición del léxico árabe andalusí de Pedro de Alcalá". Al-Qantara 10:413:51. Dozy, R. & W. H. Engelmann. 1956. Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l'arabe. Amsterdam: Oriental Press. Garniés, Álvaro. 1977. "El dialecto mozárabe de Toledo". Al-Andalus 42:183-206, 249-99. Gómez-Moreno, Manuel. 1919. Iglesias mozárabes. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Históricos. González Palencia, Ángel. 1926-30. Los mozárabes de Toledo en los siglos XII y XIII. 4 vols. Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan. Griffin, David. 1958-60. "Los mozarabismos del Vocabulista atribuidos a Ramón Martí". Al-Andalus 23:251-337; 24:333-80; 25:93-169.

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Lagarde, Paul de, ed. 1883. Petri Hispani De Lingua Arabica Libri Duo. Göttingen: Arnold Hoyer. Machado, José Pedro. 1967. Dicionário etimológico da lingua portuguesa. 2 vols. Lisboa: Editorial Confluencia. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. 1968. Origenes del español. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm. 1924. "La sonorización de las sordas intervocálicas latinas en espanol". Revista defilologíaespañola 11:5-22. Neuvonen, Ekko K. 1941. Los arabismos del español en el siglo XIII. Helsinki: Studia Orientalia. Rohlfs, Gerhard. 1966. Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti. 3 vols. Torino: Giulio Eunadi. Serrano, Luciano. 1910. Becerro gótico de Cardeña.Valladolid: Cuesta. Steiger, Arnald. 1932. Contribución a la fonética del hispano-árabe y de los arabismos en el ibero-românico y el siciliano. Madrid: Hernando. __. 1943. "Zur Sprache der Mozaraber". Romanica Helvetica 20:624-714. Tallgren, Oiva J. 1925. "Los nombres árabes de las estrellas y la transcripción alfonsina". Homenaje a Menéndez Pidal II, 663-718. Madrid: Hernando. Torreblanca, Máximo. 1976. "La sonorización de las oclusivas sordas en el habla toledana". Boletin de la Real Academia Espaňola 56:117-45. . 1982. "La s hispanolatina: el testimonio árabe". Romance Philology 35:44763. . 1983a. "Castellanismos en documentos árabes toledanos". Journal of Hispanic Philology 7:169-77. . 1983b. "La sonoridad de las consonantes oclusivas españolas". Hispania 66: 391-96. . 1986. "Las oclusivas sordas hispanolatinas: el testimonio árabe". Anuario de Letras 24:5-25.

ELEMENTS OF ROMANCE PROSODY IN THE POETRY OF IBN QUZMAN

James T. Monroe University of California, Berkeley

Classical Arabic poetry is based upon a quantitative system of prosody that was first codified by the Basran philologist, lexicographer, and grammarian Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (d. ca. 791). Al-Khalil identified sixteen meters, of which three (mudaarip muqtadab, and mujtatt1) were not employed by the Pre-Islamic poets, and may even have been invented by Al-Khalil himself. The following is a simplified table of the Khalilian meters as it has been interpreted in modern times by Gotthold Weil (1958, 1979): Circle 1 tawiil [mustatiil basiit madiid [mumtadd Circle 2 waafir kaamil

1In this paper, t = 0, d = ð.

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JAMES T. MONROE

Circle 3 hazaj rajaz ramal Circle 4 sanft munsarih khafiif mudaarip muqtadab mujtatt Circle5 mutaqaarib mutadaarik

Al-Khalil wrote his meters around the periphery of five circles. Following Weil's exposition, these meters have been rearranged horizontally, one beneath the other, to illustrate the point that all those within a given circle are based on the same rhythmic pattern, consisting of a common sequence of long and short vowels. Weil further explains that, within each metron, in any given line of poetry, there is a rhythmic core (watid) consisting normally of an iamb while in those meters comprising the fourth circle, we also encounter a trochaic core Within the core, which is invariable, it is always the long syllable that bears the stress, whereas the syllables that precede or follow the core (asbaab) are all unstressed. Being in a weak position, they are less stable than the core, hence variations in syllable-length (zihaafaat) frequently occur in them. There are two aspects of this system that deserve our attention. First, stressed syllables may be separated from one another by two, three, or even four unstressed syllables. Second, the number of unstressed syllables falling between two stressed ones may alternate, thus giving rise to syncopated stress-rhythms, as is the case with the common meter tawiil which, from the point of view of stress, would scan oó ooó oooó ooó oo. Since more unstressed syllables than a purely accentual system can tolerate are often placed between the stressed ones, and since the former may alternate in number, within a given meter, we may, perhaps, conclude that stress, although present, is not the only element

ROMANCE PROSODY IN THE POETRY OF IBN QUZMAN

65

governing the Classical system of Arabic poetry, whose harmonious effects are, instead, produced by a unique combination of quantity with stress. Assuming that Weil's interpretation of the Arabic system is correct, then we may describe it as standing somewhere between the Greek, which is purely quantitative, and the English, which is largely based on stress. In his edition of the zajals of Ibn Quzman (d. 1160), Emilio Garcia Gomez (1972) first proposed the theory that the strophic genres invented in Andalus, namely the zajal and muwaššaha, were not quantitative, but entirely stress-syllabic in nature, and that they followed the rules of Hispano-Romance prosody. His theory has not fared well. It was first challenged by Theodore J. Gorton (1975, 1978), who analyzed the meters of Ibn Quzman as purely quantitative extensions of the Khalilian system, and then by Alan Jones (1980, 1981-82, 1983-84, 1988), who claimed the same for the derivative muwaššah.2 Part of the problem with Garcia Gómez's exposition was that he entirely disregarded the quantitative aspects of Ibn Quzman's zajals, thereby taking editorial liberties with the text in order to fit it to his theory, rather than attempting to derive his theory from the text. Such a procedural error could hardly have failed to result in misunderstandings and criticism. Furthermore, despite his brilliance as a literary scholar, Garcia Gomez had no professional training as a dialectologist. More recently, Federico Corriente (1980, 1984, 1989) has bridged this gap by bringing his unparalleled knowledge of Andalusi Arabic to bear on the problem, in order to provide us with a linguistically superior edition of Ibn Quzman's Diiwaan. For Corriente, the prosody of Ibn Quzman's zajals is still a derivative of the Khalilian system, albeit one in which quantity has been replaced by stress, given the well-established fact that the Andalusi-Arabic dialects were based on stress, not quantity (CA kitaab; AA kitáb).3 This being the case, it is hardly reasonable to expect that poetry composed in those dialects should be quantitative. Therefore, Gorton's arguments can be ruled out a priori. Moreover, because of the nature of the 2

See, too, Latham (1982, 1983); Semah (1984); Corriente (1982, 1986); Haxen (1982); Monroe (1981-1982, 1986, 1987a, 1987b, 1987c); Armistead (1981-1982); Armistead & Monroe (1985); Yahalom (1985); Liu & Monroe (1989); Garcia Gomez (1991). For a review of the debate, see Armistead (1987) and Einbinder (1989). 3See Harvey (1971) and Corriente (1977:8).

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JAMES T. MONROE

Arabic script, in which zajal poetry was recorded, and in which only long vowels are systematically written down within the consonantal ductus, whereas short vowels, if they are written at all, are recorded diacritically above or below the ductus, it is entirely conceivable that syllables written as long were actually pronounced as stressed. In other words, what the Arabic script provides, may not be what medieval listeners actually heard. With this caveat in mind, let us proceed. I have chosen, as the basis for this study, the 149 zajals contained in the Diiwaan of Ibn Quzman,4 plus a single extant muwaššah by that poet (Garcia Gomez 1972, 2:904-907). In these poems, it may be noted, on a purely abstract basis that, as occurs in the Khalilian system, in most cases, stresses fall on syllables written as long. In a small minority of meters, however, a few stresses fall on syllables that should, theoretically, be short, according to the principles of Khalilian scansion. Nevertheless, upon closer investigation, one finds that in reality, there is a considerable distance between theory and practice because, in the actual poems being considered, the stressed short syllables are either rendered as long (longa in brevis), or they are short syllables that were normally stressed in the dialect (ílaa). Consider, for example, Zajal No. 22 which, from the Khalilian point of view, is a normal form of mujtatt but which exhibits a tendency toward an iambic beat: -'. In this particular poem, on the one hand, the stresses on the second and third short syllables violate the Khalilian principle that, in the rhythmic core, the long syllable alone may bear the stress. On the other hand, some of the syllables that should, in principle, be short, are either long in the text (lás), or they are normally stressed in the dialect (alládii), as in the line jaqjáqat úmm alládii lás yašrúb (4:3). In fact, aside from the abstract Khalilian meters, their dizzyingly concrete derivatives, permutations, and combinations, not to speak of certain non-Khalilian patterns that may be found in the Quzmani corpus, it is a remarkable fact that the zajals themselves behave stubbornly, insofar as they often exhibit short unstressed syllables where long unstressed ones would be required by the Khalilian 4

I have grounded my study on Corriente's edition, occasionally, interpolating necessary passages from that of Garcia Gómez, when they are omitted by Corriente. I have also checked both editions against the manuscript, published in photographic facsimile by Baron David de Gunzburg (1896).

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system, whereas, less frequently, short stressed syllables are encountered, where long stressed syllables are required. To disguise this inconsistency, the Diiwaan of Ibn Quzman further exhibits a remarkable degree of orthographic casuistry, insofar as short syllables are often written out as long to fit the hypothetical meter (maapa instead of mapa). To complicate matters even further, linguistic stresses often fluctuate within a given poem, to such an extent that no regular pattern may be discerned. All of this leads us to ask ourselves whether zajal poetry was, in fact, really governed by stress. If the latter were the case, then we might expect the Quzmani system to deviate from that of Al-Khalil in allowing only one or two unstressed syllables to intervene between two stressed ones. If the Khalilian distance between two stresses were drastically reduced in the zajal, there would be even further grounds to suspect that the Andalusi system of prosody was governed primarily by stress rather than quantity, as is the case with English poetry. Furthermore, the new reduction in distance between stressed syllables would further allow us to fit the Quzmani meters into two groups: the binary (iambic and trochaic), and the ternary (anapestic, amphibrachic, and dactylic), according to those principles of scansion shared by several Western European literatures that derived their prosodic terminology from the Græco-Latin tradition. At this point, we would thus come back, full circle, to Garcia Gómez's original theory, albeit from a slightly different angle, and with the benefit of a sounder edition of the poetic corpus. To achieve such a result we would have to abandon the Khalilian stress-system altogether and place our stresses, whenever possible, on long syllables, including some that are not part of the rhythmic core. If we did so, we might find that some of the Quzmani rhythms could be reduced to a loose form of regularity, i.e., they might appear to be either entirely binary or entirely ternary, whereas others might appear to be mixed, insofar as they might combine binary with ternary feet. Let us first consider the possibility of regular meters. The following is a table showing the best I have been able to come up with in attempting to apply the principles of stress to the meters found in the poetry of Ibn Quzman, which I have scanned quantitatively à la Al-Khalil while simultaneously indicating the least unreasonable poetic stresses:

68

Binary Rhythms Quantity + Stress Iambic

JAMES T. MONROE

Unstressed Syllables = x

Arabic Meter Circle broken foot broken foot non-khalilian mustatiil hazaj khafiif sariip mujtatt basiit basiit rajaz hazaj basiit basiit

? ? 1 3 4 4 4 1 1 3 3 1 1

Trochaic non-khalilian madiid ramal madiid non-khalilian madiid ramal non-khalilian ramal madiid Ternary Rhythms Quantity + Stress Anapestic

Unstressed Syllables = x

1 3 1 1 3 3 1

Arabic Meter Circle broken foot broken foot broken foot madiid khafiif mutadaarik mumtadd madiid khafiif madiid

? ? ? 1 4 5 1 1 4 1

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69

Amphibrachic rajaz

3

mujtatt

4

mutaqaarib

5

khafúf

4

sariip

4

mutaqaarib

5

mujtatt

4

basiit mujtatt mujtatt basiit mujtatt basiit madiid basiit munsarih mujtatt

1 4 4 1 4 1 1 1 4 4

Dactylic

To recapitulate, from the data presented above, three features appear to emerge: First, the highly casuistic set of Khalilian meters proposed for the poetry of Ibn Quzman has been rearranged into five coherent accentual groups (iambic, trochaic, anapestic, amphibrachic, and dactylic). In our rearrangement, meters from the five different and equally coherent quantitative Khalilian circles are hopelessly jumbled together. Second, stressed syllables would appear to be almost invariably long, whereas unstressed ones, being less stable, would seem to vary. Third, all stress-rhythms would be either binary or ternary. There would be no quaternary or quinquenary stressgroupings such as one finds in the Khalilian system. Our purpose in representing the unstable syllables with an "x", as we have done in the second column of our table, is to make the picture even more dramatic. Let us now consider the possibility of mixed rhythms, namely those that might combine binary with ternary feet:

Stress

Anapestic-Based Rhythms

Trochaic-Based Rhythms

iambic-Based Rhythms

Quantity +

Unstressed Syllables = *

Stichial Divisions

mutadaarik khafiif muqtadab madiid madiid non-khalilian khafiif madiid mumtadd mumtadd+mujtatt khafiif

hafiif non-khalilian mumtadd+mujtatt non-khalilian madiid mumtadd muqtadab mumtadd+mujtatt

mustatiil basiit rajaz mujtatt munsarih rajaz mustatiil

Arabic Meter

4 1 1 1+4 4

5 4 4 1 1

1 1 4 1+4

1+4

4

1 1 3 4 4 3 1

Circle

70 JAMES T. MONROE

Dactylic-Based

Rhythms

Amphibrachic-Based Rhythms

basiit basiit rajaz rajaz basiit rajaz basiit

mutaqaarib mujtatt mutaqaarib tawiil mutaqaarib

1 1 3 3 1 3 1

5 4 5 1 5

ROMANCE PROSODY IN THE POETRY OF ffiN QUZMAN 71

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It will be noted that the same essential principles governing the regular rhythms also seem to hold true for the mixed ones, namely, that stressed syllables are almost always long, whereas unstressed ones appear to be rendered either as long or short. What at first glance appears to be syncopation, after the manner of the Khalilian meters, might be understood somewhat differently, if we were to take into account that the distance between stresses has been reduced to the point that stress now seems to predominate, acoustically, over quantity. If we take a look at the stichial divisions within the lines of poetry, we will find that the caesuras often break the rhythm of the line at key points. Rhythms 33 and 34, for example, each seem to constitute a perfect double adonic. In the former example, each adonic constitutes one hemistich of the line, whereas in the latter, there is no caesura. In general, the mixed rhythms appear to be an attempt to avoid the monotony of regularity; they seem to provide variety by means of syncopations that may have been unusually well-suited to melodic realization. Furthermore, if the mixed rhythms are broken down by stiches, we will find that most of them are based on the same meters found in the regular group: Quantity + Stress

Unstressed Syllables=x Stress-Rhythm Meter + Stich

Iambic

la, 2b 2c 4a 6b 7a 7a-b

5a, 8a 5c 10b 9a 11a-b 12a-b 10a 13b

Anapestic

Anapestic-Based

16a 24b 21a-b 23a 14, 17a, 18a 19a 15 24a 20

Amphibrachic

35b 26a 25a-b, 27a 33b 34b 16b 18b 28a 29a, 30a-b, 35a,c 32a 29a-b 23b

Our interpretation of the data presented could be that, unlike Classical Arabic poetry, that of Ibn Quzman shows the presence of a true stress-system. In order to represent this stress-system in writing, the Khalilian meters have, at times, been pruned; on other occasions, additions have been made to them, while in some instances, they have been abandoned altogether. There are even certain cases of genetic engineering, in which elements from different meters have been joined to create a new rhythm foreign to the Khalilian system. Take, for example, Mixed Rhythm 25, where a first hemistich in mumtadd is followed by a second in mujtatt to produce the rhythm ooóooóo óooóooóo. In the process, new stresses have been inserted in the meters, in positions unknown to the

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Khalilian system, in order to overcome the problem, in accentual poetry, of maintaining a rhythm when three or more unstressed syllables intervene between two stressed ones. Let us therefore rearrange the rhythms found in the poetry of Ibn Quzman into two stress-syllabic tables according to the basic principles of Ibero-Romance versification, as the latter were understood by Garcia Gomez, who firmly believed that medieval Ibero-Romance lyrical poetry was governed by stress (see Garcia Gomez 1972, 2:887-888): Binary I—12 syllables n—11 syllables m—10 syllables IV—9 syllables V—8 syllables VI—7 syllables VII—6 syllables VIII—5 syllables IX—4 syllables X—3 syllables XI—2 syllables

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Ternary I—12 syllables II

syllables

III—10 syllables IV—9 syllables V—8 syllables VI—7 syllables VII—6 syllables VIII— 5 syllables IX—4 syllables X—3 syllables XI—2 syllables

In the medieval Ibero-Romance lyric, no lines are over twelve syllables in length. When longer lines do occur they are invariably broken down into shorter stichial units. This is also true of Ibn Quzman's poetry, and it explains why Khalilian meters tend to be pruned, often considerably so, in the zajal. According to postmedieval Spanish prosodic conventions, a line ending with a stressed syllable is considered to have an unstressed, hypothetical syllable thereafter, and it is included in the scansion (i.e., oó oó oó is scanned as a seven-, not a six-syllable line, and it is grouped with oó oó oó o). In the preceding tables, the longer sequences tend to comprise whole lines of poetry, whereas the shorter ones are sometimes broken feet added to provide rhythmic variety. For example, the initial two-line refrain of Zajal No. 10 is dába nápšaq-ki ílaa l-áyma + nujáyma.5 Here, the first line could be interpreted as an accentual, trochaicoctosyllabic transposition of ramal dimeter becomes óoóoóoóo), while the second constitutes a short rhythmic echo (oóo) not normally used in the Classical form of this Arabic meter, but

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which has an exact parallel in the popular Castilian villancico, A la puerta está Pelayo + y llora.6 Otherwise, shorter sequences are individual Stiches. In the latter instance, as we have seen, they might be combined with other stiches to create regular or mixed rhythms (i.e., óooóo +oóooóo [regular] or óooóo + óooóo [mixed]). In the above tables, which are entirely abstract, and include all the stresssyllabic combinations known to the medieval Ibero-Romance lyric, as Garcia Gomez perceived them to exist, the lines actually found in the corpus of Ibn Quzman are printed in Roman script, whereas those that do not occur in his Diiwaan are italicized. Another point to be made involves the statistical frequency with which the Khalilian meters are to be found in the Diiwaan of Ibn Quzman. Consider the following table: Meter kaamil waafir mustatiil muqtadab mutadaarik sariiS munsarih tawiil hazaj mumtadd broken foot ramal mutaqaarib rajaz non-khalilian khafiif mujtatt madiid basiit

Frequency 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 6 8 12 12 15 15 17 20 22 23

It is rather striking that the meters of Circle 2, namely kaamil and waafir, are never used at all. This might be so, not only because they embody quinquenary stress-rhythms that would be difficult to adapt to a true stress system, but also because it is allowed, in them, to replace 6

See Frenk (1987, No. 1637:796).

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two contiguous short syllables with one long one, so that, were this option (which is not a requirement) to be chosen by the poet, it would wreak havoc with any attempts to achieve syllabic parity. This is not to deny, of course, that the poet might well have chosen to avoid this option. Nonetheless, for reasons that are mysterious, the fact remains that Ibn Quzman did not employ the meters of Circle 2 in his poetry. Tawiil, that most common of Arabic meters, is used only twice. In contrast, matters only begin to take off with ramal, which is used in twelve poems, because, in its dimeter form, it might be converted readily into a trochaic beat in order to reproduce that most common of meters in Spanish ballads, namely the trochaic-octosyllabic line. Proceeding down the list, we note that non-Khalilian combinations occur in fifteen poems, as does the iambic sub-meter rajaz, and that the list ends with basiit, which might be pressed into service in order to reproduce both iambic and dactylic rhythms. Having led the reader down this garden path, it is high time to admit that this system, though beautiful to behold in theory, will not work in practice. It will not work because the linguistic stresses in the Quzmani corpus fluctuate considerably from line to line within each poem. Corriente has gone to great pains to mark these stresses in his edition of the Diiwaan, and all that may be concluded from his endeavors is that the stress system, which I have tried in vain to reduce to regularity is, in fact, so irregular as to lead one to doubt seriously that the prosodic system is based on stress at all, unless, as I have done above, one resorts constantly to 'ictual' readings. To put matters differently, while the Quzmani corpus may well be composed in a stress-based language and cannot, therefore, be quantitative; the poetry itself is not governed by linguistic stress, hence the poet is not relying on a true stress-system. Let me offer an illustration: Zajal No. 23, may be scanned, Arabico modo, as a single hemistich of tawiil (maštuur), that most common of Arabic meters, but with its last metron removed (majzuup): In fact, the overall rhythm of the poem suggests that all the lines have a regular caesura in the middle, and that their syllables and stresses need to be regrouped differently: Thus, the initial refrain reads:

78

JAMES T. MONROE ayyáman miláh šárt al-khalápa hirr úmm alládi yapmál sanápa

What we actually hear, in the first line, is the mixed rhythm oóooó óooóo, in which the sixth syllable is being stressed in a way that is foreign to Khalilian prosody, precisely in order to break up a cluster of three unstressed syllables between two accented ones, since a prosodic system based on stress cannot tolerate quaternary rhythms. In the second line, however, we encounter a variation in both hemistichs (oóoóo oóoóo) which violates the most basic principles of any stress-based prosodic system, by replacing the amphibrachic rhythm of the first line with an iambic one. Since neither quantity nor stress appear to be in control, within this prosodie system, we are left with a third metrical possibility, namely that of the Romance languages, whose medieval lyrical poetry, contrary to what Garcia Gomez maintained, was based on syllable count alone. At this stage in our analysis, we need to take into account that, in the medieval system of versification used in the Ibero-Romance lyric, to which the Quzmani system bears the closest of affinities, stress patterns also fluctuate within a poem. The medieval Ibero-Romance system has, at times, been described by scholars accustomed to modern habits of versification, as a stress-controlled one, and was understood to be such by Garcia Gomez. But in reality, this is not the case, at least not in any sense involving regularity. As far as linguistic stresses are concerned, although any given poem may exhibit a tendency toward a theoretically regular rhythm, such a rhythm is rarely regular in practice. 7 It would, therefore, be more accurate to describe both the medieval Ibero-Romance and the Quzmani systems as entirely syllabic, and to apply Garcia Gómez's tables to them with total disregard for stress. In fact, thirty years ago Garcia Gomez invoked the law proposed by the nineteenth-century Italian scholar Mussafia, according to whom, in medieval Galician-Portuguese poetry, lines containing an equal number of syllables could end either in a stressed or an unstressed syllable. Garcia Gomez (1962) further adduced numerous examples of this same phenomenon in the medieval Castilian lyric, and noted, correctly, that this practice is frequent in 7

See Navarro Tomás (1956).

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the Quzmani corpus. The law of Mussafia, which stands in conflict with the modern Spanish principle of versification according to which an end-stressed line is considered to have an extra, hypothetical syllable thereafter, can only mean that it was syllable count (sílabas cuntadas) alone, and not stress, that constituted the basis of medieval Ibero-Romance and Colloquial Andalusi prosody. If these remarks are not entirely unsound, it may be added that they have further implications. The zajal poetry of Al-Shushtari (ca 1212-1269), who lived a century after Ibn Quzman, is composed in the same meters as those of his illustrious predecessor.8 Therefore, both poets' common use of the same metrical system was not an idiosyncrasy peculiar to either one of them, but was, more than likely, a characteristic of the genre as a whole. Furthermore, within this metrical system we must also include the muwaššah, with certain reservations, insofar as the latter is composed in Classical Arabic, which is a quantitative language. Nonetheless, Medieval Arab theoreticians point out that the muwaššah was normally composed by first choosing a kharja in Colloquial Arabic or Romance, upon which the poet then constructed his poem.9 As a result, the specific kharja chosen by the poet imparted its meter to the resulting muwaššah. As I have shown elsewhere, the colloquial Arabic kharjas are normally quotations from other poems, largely zajals.10 Moreover, in an impressive number of instances, they are quotations from the initial refrain (matlap) of a preexisting zajal, and they are included in the muwaššah to indicate to potential singers, the melody to which the poet wishes his poem to be sung. In essence, the muwaššah is, therefore, a Classical contrafaction (mulaarada), not only metrical, but also melodic, of the Colloquial zajal on which it is based; it is derived from the latter and, along with zajal tunes, it adopted the syllabic nature of the zajal's metrical system.11 This, in turn, helps to explain why muwaššah meters, though quantitative, are often nonKhalilian. New quantitative meters had to be invented in order to reproduce the purely syllabic combinations of the zajal. In sum, having ruled out both quantity and stress, as controlling factors in 8See Corriente (1988).

9 See Armistead & Monroe (1985). 10 See the discussion in Monroe (1986, 11

See Monroe (1988, 1989).

1987a).

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zajal prosody, we may conclude that there is absolutely nothing Khalilian about it whatsoever, aside from its bad orthography and, having further established that its prosody was based solely on syllable count, the logical inference can only be that the zajal is even closer to the medieval Ibero-Romance prosodic tradition than has been suspected previously. The purely syllabic meters and complicated strophic structure of the zajal coincide arrestingly with those of certain medieval songs found throughout Romania. In Italy, this poetic structure was known as the ballata; in Northern France, as the virelai; in Provence, as the dansa; in Galicia, as the cantiga and, in Castile, as the villancico. The same form also appears in certain Middle English carols, while there is even one Old Irish poem, in the zojalesque structure, contained in the ninth-century epic Táin Bó Cúalnge.12 However, the lyric itself, according to George Sigerson (1925:119), may have been composed before the sixth century. That is to say, the Old Irish poem may antedate the invention of the muwaššah (which occurred around the year 900) by at least four centuries, and belong to a period long before Arabs appeared on the Iberian coastline. A genre of poetry that was so widespread, must have been extremely popular in its heyday and, as such, it is hard to imagine that it would not have come to the attention of the Arab poets of Andalus, who paid it the ultimate compliment of adopting its syllabic meters and strophic form into their non-quantitative spoken language and literature. Let me conclude by stating that, insofar as the controversy over the metrics of Andalusi strophic poetry is concerned, both sides have contributed valuable insights and, up to a point, both are right. By insisting that the corpus may be scanned according to a modified form of the Khalilian system, the partisans of the Arabic thesis have shown undeniable areas of coincidence between Classical and Colloquial Andalusi prosody. It is the very presence of the modifications, however, that raises more questions than the Khalilian metrical theory is equipped to answer. Indeed, one might even go so far as to ask why Andalusi poets felt it necessary to tamper with their perfectly coherent Classical system at all, unless it was because they were under the 12

See O'Rahilly (1967:99-100); and Sigerson, English trans. (1925:119-120). The Old Irish zajal is discussed in Dillon (1948: 3-13); Roolvink (1975); Véber (1979); Morras (1988).

ROMANCE PROSODY IN THE POETRY OF IBN QUZMAN

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pressure of an entirely different local system. That system, however, speaks eloquently for itself through the texts that have come down to us, and here the partisans of the Romance thesis are entirely correct in pointing out that the prosodie system in which Andalusi strophic poetry is couched bears so close a resemblance to medieval IberoRomance prosody that the similarity cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. As we have noted, Ibero-Romance poetry is characterized by variations in stress. At this juncture, we must not forget that the medieval Ibero-Romance lyric was normally sung, hence, perfect accentual regularity was not necessary to it, insofar as the melody of the song always imposed its own regularity upon the words of the text. And, when a system is unnecessary, it need not be developed. Elsewhere, I have attempted to show, on the basis of medieval authorities, that the Andalusi strophic tradition too, was primarily one of songs,13 hence the accentual fluctuations in Ibn Quzman's verse are of little importance, insofar as they can be masked by musical rendition, as can those of their putative Romance congeners. Thus, by claiming that the poems of Ibn Quzman are couched in a form of Khalilian versification that violates many of the basic Khalilian principles, ranging from the abandonment of quantity and stress, to the invention of ad hoc meters, the partisans of the Arabic thesis are telling us what those poems are not: they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, Khalilian. In contrast, when the partisans of the Romance thesis point out that the versification of the poems can be reduced to a highly organic system; one that coincides in almost every respect with another known system, namely that of the medieval Ibero-Romance lyric, they are telling us what those poems really are: they are an offshoot of Ibero-Romance metrics. And this conclusion seems to fit better with the available evidence and known historical circumstances. Despite the fact that the Romance thesis has been declared dead, largely by those who do not understand it, I cannot help but continue to suspect that the Quzmani corpus was based on, and governed by, the syllabic system of Ibero-Romance prosody, even though it was dressed up, orthographically speaking, in the only metrical trappings medieval Arabs knew, namely those provided by 13

See Monroe (1987a) and Liu & Monroe (1989).

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JAMES T. MONROE

the Khalilian system. Nevertheless, much drastic tailoring became necessary, in order to adjust the foreign robes to a native body entirely different in shape. In other words, the native Andalusi syllabic system has been translated into orthographically seductive, yet embarrassingly un-Khalilian terms. Let me therefore venture to suggest that we are considering a body in which the Khalilian element is orthographic clothing, not prosodic flesh. If I am not entirely wrong in my assumptions, then the Quzmani corpus is, prosodically speaking, an Ibero-Romance emperor dressed up in new and fashionable Khalilian clothes.

ROMANCE PROSODY IN THE POETRY OF IBN QUZMAN APPENDIX Table of Correspondences Regular Rhythms Binary Stress Rhythm Iambic 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Zajal No.

Arabic Meter

10, 136 16, 138 120, 141, 142 39 4 66 138 22 13, 47, 79, 91, 144, 147 6 , 3 1 , 85, 115, 121. 146 3 30, 134 125 149

broken foot broken foot non-khalilian mustatiil hazaj khafiif sarirp mujtatt basiif rajaz basiit hazaj basiit basiit non-khalilian madiid ramal madiid non-khalilian madiid ramal non-khalilian ramal

24

54 16,99 10 16 120, 141, 142 12, 137, 143, 150 61 25 11,24,28, 67,68, 89, 93, 97, 98, 148 150 (muwaššaha)

Ternary Anapestic 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

32,64 109 127 32,64 75 65 136 107, 108 75 107, 108

broken foot broken foot broken foot madiid khafiif mutadaarik mumtadd madiid khafiif madiid

Trochaic 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

madiid

83

84

JAMES T. MONROE

Amphibrachic

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

62 139 55, 72, 114, 140, 145 124 36 46, 105 , 112 15

rajaz

109 14,43 22,53 33, 35, 128 123, 126, 139 130 58 122 29 26

basiit mujtatt mujtatt basiit

101 40,51 62 37,60, 71,73,74, 104, 110 111, 119 4 17 39

basiit basiit rajaz mujtatt

100 50,63 54 77 117 2,41 57 129

khafiif non-khalilian non-khalilian non-khalilian madiid mumtadd muqtadab mumtadd+mujtatt

65 55, 69, 106, 116 5

mutadaarik khafiif muqtadab

mujtatt mujtatt khafiif sariip mutaqaarib mujtatt

Dactylic

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

mujtatt basiit madid basiit munsarih mujtatt

Mixed Rhythms Binary Iambic-Based

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

munsarih rajaz mustatiil

Trochaic-Based

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Ternary Anapestic-Based

16 17 18

ROMANCE PROSODY IN THE POETRY OF IBN QUZMAN

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

59, 113 7, 20, 83

49 9, 19, 21, 38, 84, 87, 88, 90, 94, 95 96, 101, 102, 118 ,132 56,86 44, 48, 82

103 52

madiid madiid ncn-khalilian khafiif madiid mumtadd mumtadd+mujtatt khafiif

Amphibrachic-Based

27 28 29 30 31

72 8 80,81 1,23

78

mutaqaarib mujtatt mutaqaarib tawiil mutaqaarib

Dactylic-Based

32 33 34 35 36 37 38

34, 70, 92, 131 121, 133, 146 18, 45, 127, 135

123 42 27 76

85

basiit khafiif rajaz rajaz basiit rajaz basiit

86

JAMES T. MONROE REFERENCES

Armistead, Samuel G. 1981-1982. "Speed or Bacon? Further Meditations on Professor Alan Jones' 'Sunbeams'". La Corónica 10.148-155. . 1987. "A Brief History of Kharja Studies". Hispania 70.8-15. & James T. Monroe. 1985. "Beached Whales and Roaring Mice: Additional remarks on Hispano-Arabic strophic poetry". La Corónica 13.206-242. Corriente, Federico. 1977. A Grammatical Sketch of the Spanish Arabic Dialect Bundle. Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Árabe de Cultura. . 1980. Gramática, métrica y texto del cancionero hispanoárabe de Aban Quzman. Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura. . 1982. "The Metres of the Muwaššaha, an Andalusian Adaptation of 'Arud: A bridging hypothesis". Journal of Arabic Literature 13.76-82. . 1984. Ibn Quzman: el cancionero hispanoárabe. Madrid: Editora Nacional. (2nd ed., Ibn Quzmän: Cancionero andalusí. Madrid: Hiperion, 1989). . 1986. "Métrica hebrea cuantitativa, métrica de la poesía estrófica andalusí y 'aruď'. Sefarad 46.124-132. __. 1988. Poesía estrófica (céjeles y/o muwaššahat) atribuída al místico granadino Al-Shushtarí (siglo XIII d. C). Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Dillon, Myles. 1948. Early Irish Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Einbinder, Susan L. 1989. "The Current Debate on the Muwaššah". Prooftexts 9.161-177. Frenk, Margit. 1987. Corpus de la antigua Urica popular hispánica (siglos XV a XVII). Madrid: Castalia. Garcia Gomez, Emilio. 1962. "La 'ley de Mussafia' se aplica a la poesía estrófica arábigoandaluza". Al-Andalus 27.1-20. _ . 1972. Todo Ben Quzmän, editado, interpretado, medido y explicado. 3 vols. Madrid: Gredos. _ . 1991. "El escándalo de las jarchas en Oxford". Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 188.1-104. Gorton, Theodore J. 1975. "The Metre of Ibn Quzman: A 'classical' approach". Journal of Arabic Literature 6.1-29 . 1978. "Zajal and Muwaššah'. The continuing metrical debate". Journal of Arabic Literature 9.32-40. Gunzburg, Baron David de. 1896. Le Divan ďlbn Quzman, texte, traduction, commentaire. fasc. 1 (no further fascicles appeared). Berlin: Calvary. Harvey, Leonard Patrick. 1971. "The Arabic Dialect of Valencia in 1595". AlAndalus 36.81-115. Haxen, Ulf. 1982. "Khargas in Hebrew Muwaššahas (A Plea for 'A Third Approach')". Al-Qantara 3.473482. Jones, Alan. 1980. "Romance Scansion and the Muwaššahat: An emperor's new clothes?" Journal of Arabic Literature 11.36-55. . 1981-1982. "Sunbeams from Cucumbers? An Arabist's assessment of the state of Kharja studies". La Corónica 10.38-53. . 1983-1984. "Eppur si muove". La Corónica 12.45-70. . 1988. Romance Kharjas in Andalusian Arabic Muwaššah Poetry: A palaeographic analysis. London: Ithaca Press.

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Latham, John D. 1982. "New Light on the Scansion of an Old Andalusian Muwaššaha".Journal of Semitic Studies 27.61-75 . 1983. "The Prosody of an Andalusian Muwaššaha Reexamined". Arabian and Islamic Studies. . . Presented to R.B. Serjeant ed. by R. L. Bidwell and G. R. Smith, 86-99. London & New York: Longman. Liu, Benjamin M. & James T. Monroe. 1989. Ten Hispano-Arabic Strophic Songs in the Modern Oral Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press (University of California Publications in Modern Philology, 125). Monroe, James T. 1981-1982. "¿Pedir peras al olmo? On medieval Arabs and modern Arabists". La Corónica 10.121-147. . 1986. "Poetic Quotation in the Muwaššaha and Its Implications: Andalusian strophic poetry as song". La Corónica 14.23Ó-250. . 1987a. "The Tune or the Words? Singing Hispano-Arabic poetry". AlQantara 8.265-317. . 1987b. "A Sounding Brass and Tinkling Cymbal: Al-Khalil in Andalus (Two notes on the Muwaššaha)". La Corónica 15.252-258. . 1987c. "Wanton Poets and Would-Be Paleographers (Prolegomena to Ibn Quzman's Zajal No. 10)99. La Corónica 16.1-42. . 1988. "Ibn Quzmān on Icrāb: A zéjel de juglaría in Arab Spain?" Hispanic Studies in Honor of Joseph Silverman ed. by Joseph V. Ricapito, 45-56. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta. . 1989. "Which Came First, the Zajal or the Muwaššaha? Some evidence for the oral origins of Hispano-Arabic strophic poetry". Oral Tradition 4:1-2.38-64. Morrās, María. 1988. "¿Zéjeles o formas zejelescas? Observaciones para el estudio de un problema de historia literaria". La Corónica 17.52-75. Navarro Tomás, Tomás. 1956. Métrica española: reseña histórica y descriptiva. (2nd ed., 1966). New York: Las Americas. O'Rahilly, Cecile, ed. 1967. Táin Bó Cúalnge: From the book of Leinster. (Irish Texts Society, 49.) Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Roolvink, Hednig. 1975. "El origen céltico en la poesía rimada medieval, sobre todo en relacíon con el zéjel español". Neophilologus 59.1-13. Semah, David. 1984. "Quantity and Syllabic Parity in the Hispano-Arabic Muwaššaha". Arabica 31.80-107. Sigerson, George. 1925. Bards of the Gael and Gall: Examples of the poetic literature of Erinn Done into English after the metres and modes of the Gael. 3rd ed. Dublin: Talbot Press. Véber, Gyula. 1979. "Überlegungen zum Ursprung der Zagal-Structur". Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 21.267-276. Weil, Gotthold. 1958. Grundriss und System der altarabischen Metren. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. . 1979. '"Arüd". The Encyclopaedia of Islam 1.667-677. 2nd ed. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Yahalom, Yosef. 1985. "Aportaciones a la prosodia de la moaxaja a la luz de la literatura hebrea". Miscelanea de estudiosárabesy hebraicos 34: 2.6-25.

II

ARABIC IN CONTACT: OTHER CONNECTIONS

CONNECTIVES IN ARABIC DIGLOSSIA: THE CASE OF LEBANESE ARABIC*

Mahmoud A1-Batal Emory University

1. Introduction The term connective as employed in the present study refers to any element in a text which indicates a linking or transitional relationship between phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, or larger units of discourse, exclusive of referential or lexical ties. The term 'connective' as used here is analogous to the term 'conjunction' used by Halliday & Hasan in their work Cohesion in English (1976), which deals, among other things, with the cohesive role of English conjunctions and their role in textuality. The choice of 'connective' over 'conjunction' here is based on Van Dijk's argument that the account of natural language connectives is not restricted to expressions of the form class of proper conjunction but also includes expressions from other categories (1977:14).1 Following the theoretical framework for the study of cohesion established by Halliday & Hasan, Al-Batal (1985, 1990) examined the cohesive role of connectives in a contemporary expository Modern *Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in Los Angeles, 1988, and at the Seventeenth North American Conference on Afro-Asiatic Linguistics (NACAL) in New Orleans, 1989.I would like to thank Kristen Brustad and Keith Walters for their valuable comments and suggestions. l This argument is clearly supported by Al-Batal (1990), which examined connectives in MSA, as well as by the present analysis. Both studies contain connectives that consist of prepositional phrases and adverbials.

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Standard Arabic (MSA) text and made a number of observations. Among these were the following: 1) Connectives in the text function at various levels, including phrase, clause, sentence, paragraph, and discourse. This observation suggests that the sentence-based approach that has dominated the study of connectives in Arabic grammar does not adequately account for their complex textual functions. 2) Connectives are used extensively in the text, especially between sentences and between paragraphs. In instances where connectives are missing between sentences and paragraphs, the absence of an explicit connective seems, in itself, to be indicative of certain shifts in the flow of the discourse. 3) Arabic, in its written form, imposes a 'connecting' constraint that requires the writer to signal to the readers, through the frequent use of explicit connectives, the types of relationships holding among the various constituents of the text. 4) This connecting constraint is realized in the structure of the Arabic sentence where there exists a 'connecting' slot that precedes the verb or subject slots and that must be filled by a connective. These observations, however, were made based on the occurrence of connectives in one written formal Arabic text and thus cannot be assumed to describe connecting patterns in the language as a whole. Arabic is known to be a diglossic language that displays significant differences between its written and spoken forms. There is a wide variety of Arabic dialects that differ along regional and ethnic lines. Although the phonological and morphological aspects of many of these dialects have been investigated, the relationships between each dialect and MSA, on the one hand, and among the various dialects, on the other hand, have not been adequately addressed, particularly at the syntactic and discourse levels. 2 Moreover, within every dialect of Arabic, there exist different levels among which native speakers shift back and forth depending on the context of the situation; the choice of level seems to be affected by a number of sociolinguistic factors such as education and gender of the speaker, prestige of the variety used, 2

An important contribution in this area has been recently made by Brustad (1991) who examined a number of syntactic features in the Egyptian, Kuwaiti, Moroccan, and Syrian dialects, with special emphasis on semantic and pragmatic factors.

CONNECTIVES IN ARABIC DIGLOSSIA

93

etc. 3 Because of the diglossic nature of Arabic and the complexity of these various levels, an examination of connectives and their role in the spoken varieties of the language becomes necessary. The present study sets out to undertake such an examination using Lebanese Arabic (LA) as its domain of inquiry. Utilizing a corpus of data gathered from Lebanese radio and TV programs as well as from recorded interviews, this study aims to examine the connectives used in LA and to analyze the way they function across the various levels. The data used here were collected during two field trips to Lebanon in 1989 and 1991 and include twelve recorded texts from speakers with different socio­ economic and educational backgrounds, ranging from upper to lower class and from uneducated to university-educated. The topics cover a wide range of contexts and discourse types. The study is comprised of three main sections. The first section examines the types and scopes of connectives found in the data. The next section discusses the four main connecting patterns observed in the texts and relates these patterns to different levels of LA, utilizing Badawi's concept of the levels of Egyptian Arabic. The last section draws a number of observations related to the use of connectives in LA and compares these observations to those made in relation to MSA. 2. Types and Scopes of Connectives in the Data 2.1 Types The connectives included in the data can be grouped into three main categories: (1) connectives that are unique to LA, (2) connectives that are common to both LA and MSA, and (3) connectives that are borrowed form MSA. In the following section, a detailed description of the members of each category is provided. Each connective is presented in terms of: (i) the semantic or discourse function(s) which it performs, (ii) the level(s) at which it operates in the data, including the phrase, clause, sentence, 4 paratone, 5 and discourse 6 levels, and (iii) its frequency of occurrence at each level. 3

For detailed discussions of these levels and their defining features, see Badawi (1973), El-Hassan (1977), and Mitchell (1978). 4The term 'sentence' here is used to mean a compound or complex sentence. Also, it is used in the 'text-sentence' as defined by Lyons (1978,II:622). 5 The term 'paratone' is used here to refer to stuctural units of spoken discourse that take the form of speech paragraph. Like the orthographic paragraph, a paratone or

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MAHMOUD AL-BATAL

2.1.1 Connectives unique to LA Members of this group include connectives which are present in the data but which are used by LA and not by MSA. Some are discussed below, in order of frequency of occurrence: (a) yapni "in other words" Ya pni in MSA is a verb phrase that means "it means" and is occasionally used as a connective signaling a reiterative relationship between the elements it connects. In LA, however, the use of yapni is far more complex, which is why it is classified under the LA connectives and not under those that are common to both LA and MSA. Throughout the data, yapni is utilized frequently, in some contexts as a connective, and in others as a discourse-filler (similar to "I mean" or "you know" in English). The present analysis is concerned with the former function of yapni rather than the latter. As a connective in the data, yapni appears five times at the phrase level, twice at the clause level, four times at the sentence level, seven at the paratone level, and once at the discourse level, for a total of nineteen occurrences. The discourse function performed by yapni in these occurrences is that of explanation and reiteration, as is apparent in the following example: (1) ayyan yakun mawduup l-?ard, yallii keen-u kill-un mittifpiin whatever it-be subject the land, that was-they all-them agreed pl-ee on-it

bi-1-muqaawame innu keen yajib iqaamit nizaam in-the-resistance that it was it must establishment system

hukm jadiid istiqlaali... government new independent

yapni it means

1-kill the-all

keen-u they-were

mittifPiin innu b-yisaal-u Sala nizaam dimuqraati ka-1-anzimi agreed that -arrive-they at system democratic like-the-systems illi keen-et which were-they

pam-titbalwar b-?oroppa CONT.-crystallizing in-Europe

w-l-yarb. and-the West.

'speech paragraph' is identified by some boundary markers such as pitch, long pauses, certain lexical items, etc. (see Brown & Yule 1984:100-1). 6 The 'discourse' level refers to those instances in which the connective connects chunks of the discourse larger than the sentence or paratone.

CONNECTIVES IN ARABIC DIGLOSSIA

95

"Whatever the issue of the land was, they (in the resistance) agreed on the necessity of establishing a new independent system of government. In other words, they all were in agreement that they should reach a democratic system of government similar to those that were forming in Europe and the West."

In the above example, yapni functions at the sentence level, introducing a sentence in which the speaker further explains a point which he has just made in the preceding sentence. (b) bass "but" The word bass, as it occurs in the data, performs two functions.7 The first, which is not pertinent to the scope of the present study, is that of an adverbial similar to the English adverbial "only". The second is that of a connective that indicates an adversative meaning between the elements it connects. In its capacity as a connective, bass occurs a total of nine times: once at the clause level, seven times at the sentence level, and once at the discourse level. The following is an example of the use of bass in the data: (2) ana manni mehtamm deefip pan hizb alla I am not interested defend party God 1-umuur b-itaar-ha the-matters in-frame work-its

bass baddi hutt but I want I put

s-sahih.... the-correct

"I am not interested in defending Hizbollah, but I want to place matters in their correct framework."

(c) halla? "now; well then" While the word halla?, in most of its occurrences in LA, serves as a temporal adverbial, there are seven instances in the data where halla? performs the role of a connective signaling a shift in the movement of the discourse. It occurs six times at the paratone level and once at the discourse level. An example of these occurrences is the following: 7 In addition to these two meanings, bass in LA can mean "only" as in šift tlat wleed bass "I only saw three kids". It can also mean "stop; enough" as in bass ba?a, haaji tihki ! "stop talking! that's enough!" These two meanings of bass, however, were not represented in our data.

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(3) Sala sapiid 1-ard fii-na n?uul innuu keen fii hadaf: imma in regard to the land can-we we say that it was there a goal: either haazihi 1-ard ka-ma hiya 1-mutasarrifiyye imma tawsiip-ha this the land as-that it (is) the Mutasarrifiyya either expanding-it immaa qaliilan immaa kaØiiran. halla? ayyan yakun mawduup either a little either much. Now whatever it-be subject 1-ard yallii keen-u kill-un mittifPiin pl-ee bi-1-muqaawame the land, that were-they all-them agreed on it in-the-resistance innu keen that it was

yajib iqaamit nizaam hukm it must establishment system government

jadiid... new...

"In regard to the land, we can say that there was a goal: either to keep this land as it was during the Mutasarrifiyya Period or to expand it, either a little or a lot. Now, whatever the issue of the land was, they (in the resistance) agreed on the necessity of establishing a new system of government." In this example, hallaP signals that a shift in the discourse topic is about to happen, that the speaker is shifting from the discussion of the issue of land to the issue of the system of government to which the Lebanese resistance was aspiring. In most of its occurrences in the data, halla ? marks the beginning of new paratones and is usually accompanied by shifts in the speaker's tone of voice. (d) ba?a "so; well; therefore" The connective bapa occurs in the data three times: once at the sentence level, and twice at the discourse level. It signals a conclusive relationship similar to that signaled by fa and iSan in MSA. Below is an example of its occurrence in the data: (4) ...kamm marra wajjah-na dapweet li-1-hiwaar ...how many times extended-we invitations for-the-dialogue

la-kull to-all

97

CONNECTIVES IN ARABIC DIGLOSSIA 1-furaqaa? 1-lubneeniyyiin? hayda tatarruf? ba?a iza the-parties the-Lebanese? this extremism? Well if

1-bapd the-some

jeeyiin yapml-u mapaayiis pala zawPun hinni hurriin.... liking-their they free..,. coming make-they standards to "How many times have we extended invitations for dialogue to all the Lebanese parties? Is this extremism? Well, if some people want to set standards to their liking, they are free (to do so)." (e)

tayyib "all right" As a connective,8 the word tayyib appears in the data twice at the discourse level, in conversational situations signaling shifts between speakers as can be seen in the following example: (5) S1: ...nihna šuuferiyyit s-serviis kill n-nhaar ...we drivers the-Serviis all the-day min-?ill-lun we say-(to)them S2: tayyib, šu all right, what

bi-sibb-uu-na curse-they-us

b-?amr-kun at your service.... hiyyi izan s-supubee it therefore the-difficulties

pa-t-tur?aat on-the-roads

bi-s-seer? in-the-traffic? S1 : "We, the Serviis (shared taxi) drivers, they swear at us all day long and we tell them: 'we are at your service'." S2 "All right, what, then, are the difficulties [which you face] on the road with traffic?" (f) dakkoor"all right" This is the Lebanese version of the French-borrowed word d'accord "granted, agreed" that is noticed frequently in the speech of French-educated Lebanese speakers. It occurred in the data once at the paratone level performing the same function of tayyib, as is apparent in the following: 8 The word tayyib is also used in LA to mean "delicious" as in akl tayyib "delicious food", "good" as in Palbu tayyib "he is good-hearted", and "alive" as in bapd-u tayyib "he is still alive".

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(6) ...iza badd-i hutt 1-umuur bi- itaar-ha s-sahiih kill ši ...if want-I I put the matters in-context-its the-correct every thing ism-u wujuud γayr muslim bi-lubneen na ? d-u t-teem name-its presence non Muslim in-Lebanon antithesis-its the-complete hizb alla. dakkoor, ana mann-i mehtamm deefip San hizb alla party God party God. all right, I not-I interested defend bass but

badd-i want-I

hutt I put

1-umuur b-itaar-ha s-sahiih.... the-matters in-context-its the-correct

"If I want to place matters in their correct context, [I would have to say that] Hizbollah is the complete antithesis to every non-Muslim presence in Lebanon. O.K., I am not interested in defending Hizbollah, but I want to place matters in their correct framework...."

In this example, dakkoor signals that the speaker is shifting from his ongoing argument about the impact of Hizbollah on Lebanon to a new phase in which he explains his own position regarding Hizbollah. Explanation of this position, it seems, is important to rebut any possible objections which the hearer may have regarding the speaker's preceding statement about Hizbollah. 2.1.2 Connectives shared with MSA This group includes those connectives in the data that are basically found in MSA but are also used frequently in predominantly LA contexts. Members of this group include the following: (a) wa "and" The connective wa (sometimes pronounced as w-) in LA performs the same function as the MSA connective wa; it signals an additive relationship between the elements it connects. wa is by far the most frequently used connective in the data; all the texts examined display occurrences of wa at the phrase, clause, and sentence levels. There are 90 occurrences of wa at the phrase level, 73 at the clause level, 39 at the sentence level, and 5 at the paratone level for a total of 207. This number represents 63% of all occurrences of connectives in the data. This observation parallels that made about the MSA text in which wa accounted for 54.5% of all connectives in the text. The high frequency

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of wa in both data makes it the 'universal' connective in both varieties of Arabic and across the various levels. (b) aw "or" The connective aw in LA is used in exactly the same way it is used in MSA; it signals an alternative relationship between the elements it conjoins. There are twenty occurrences of aw: fourteen at the phrase level, five at the clause level, and one at the paratone level. (c) la-innu "because" The connective la-innu (sometimes pronounced as li-annu) represents the LA variation of the MSA connective li-anna and, like it, conveys the meaning of causality, la-innu occurs in the data fourteen times: nine times at the clause level, twice at the sentence level, once at the paratone level, and twice at the discourse level. (d) izan "therefore; thus" The connective izan in LA is the equivalent of i&an in MSA. It signals a conclusive relationship and it registers seven occurrences in the data: one at the sentence level, two at the paratone level, and four at the discourse level. (e) leekin "but" This connective is the LA counterpart of laakin in MSA and, like it, signals an adversative relationship. It occurs twice at the clause level and twice at the sentence level. (f) min hoon (hawn) 9 "hence" This connective literally means "from here" represents the LA version of min hunaa in MSA. It signals a conclusive relationship and it registers three occurrences at the discourse level. (g) mapinnu "despite"

9

hawn represents a regional pronounciation variety of hoon that is mainly used in the rural and mountain areas of Lebanon.

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MAHMOUD AL-BATAL

This is the LA version of the MSA connective ma panna which signals an adversative relationship. It occurs only once, at the clause level. (h) min neehyi teenyi "on the other hand" Literally, this connective means "from another side" and is the LA equivalent of the MSA connective min naahiya θaaniya which signals a discourse additive relationship. It occurs only once at the discourse level in one text. 2.1.3 Connectives borrowed from MSA This category includes connectives that represent direct borrowings from MSA. The rationale behind treating these connectives as borrowings from MSA rather than as members of the second group, i.e., LA connectives that are shared with MSA, is two-fold. First, these connectives occur in texts or in portions of texts that are heavily dominated by MSA vocabulary and structures. Equally as important, for reasons that will be discussed later in this paper, the speakers opted to use these particular connectives despite the fact that each one of them has at least one counterpart among the first two groups. (a) fa "therefore; as a result" While the connective wa is the most frequently used in the data, the use of the connective fa is the most complex and the most interesting. This observation on the use of fa in LA is similar to the observations made on its use in MSA discourse (Al-Batal 1985:128-9). What makes fa interesting is the fact that it performs different functions in the data. While in the vast majority of its occurrences in the data (thirteen out of sixteen), fa denotes a conclusive meaning; there are three instances in which it denotes a causal meaning. Also, fa serves to introduce the comment in the topic-comment introducer amma... fa "as for...". In addition, fa is distinguished by the fact that it is the connective with the highest number of occurrences at the sentence level and above. Of its sixteen total occurrences, one is at the clause level, compared to seven at the sentence level, five at the paratone level, and three at the discourse level. This is a clear indication of the importance of fa as a text-building element in spoken Arabic discourse. Furthermore, the use of fa in the data is prevalent in particular types of

101

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LA discourse. fa is observed in the discourse of educated speakers in general and in discourses that were argumentative in particular. Among the examples of the use of fa in the data are: (7) b-yismah-la-k inna-k tzitt n-nifeyeet matrah it allows-to-you that-you you throw the-garbage where

ma n-nees the-people

b-tiji txayyim ta-tSiiš.... fa-1-ha-s-sabab mafruud -they come they camp to-live.... Therefore-for-this-the-reason should innu ykuun fii tašriiS biipii yafrid palaa that it be there legislation environmental it imposes on an-nifeeyeet the garbage

innu that

masnap factory

yeexid-un.... it takes-them....

"...That allows you to throw garbage where people live and camp; therefore, for this reason, there should be a legislation that requires that the garbage (processing) plant take them (away)...". (8) wa-huneek intixaab li-kaØulikus jadiid fa-jaa?a man jaa?a and-there election for-Catholicos new so-he came who he-came mina l-paalam from the-world

aš-šuyuupi the-communist

yuhaawil wadpa yadi-hi he-tries putting hand-his

palaa on

haaða 1-markaz... this the-center... "and there(were) elections for a new (Armenian) Catholicos so, there were those who came from the Communist World trying to get their hands on this position". (9) ra?a ha-1-haale ka-maa hiya fa-ra?a he-saw this-the-situation as-what it (is) consequently-he-saw lam did not

yapud bi-1-imkeen become possible

al-ibqaa? Sala the-maintaining (of)

anna-hu that-it

1-inyilaaq. the-closedness.

"He saw this situation and, consequently, saw that it was no longer possible to maintain (this state of) closedness."

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These examples clearly demonstrate how the use of fa is representative of a level of discourse that is heavily dominated by MSA lexicon and structure. In example (7), fa not only signals a conclusive relationship between the segments it connects, but also marks a shift in the level of discourse from a more colloquial-based to a more MSAbased level, as indicated by lexical items such as tzitt and matrah, as contrasted to tašriiS biiPi and yafrid. In example (8), fa introduces a sentence that is entirely MSA, to the extent that some nouns are fully declined (wadSa yadi-hi). The same MSA dominance can also be noticed in example (9) in the frequent use of verbal noun structures and the negating particle lam. (b) pada pan inn "in addition" (lit. "not excluding that") This connective signals an additive relationship similar to that of Sadaa San anna in MSA. It occurs once in the data at the clause level. (c) bi-l-idaafe li- "in addition to" This is the LA version of the MSA connective bi-l-idaafa li- which has an additive meaning. It appears once in the data at the phrase level. (d) fadlan San "in addition to" This is an MSA connective that signals an additive relationship and that is used only once in the data at the phrase level. (e) bi-maSna innu"i.e" This connective represents the LA pronunciation of the MSA bimaSna annahu which denotes an explicative meaning similar to that of ay. It also registers only one occurrence in the text at the paratone level. (f) innama "but; but rather" This is an MSA connective that also signals an adversative relationship. It occurs in the data three times at the sentence level. (g) kazeelik "likewise, similarly" kazeelik represents the LA variant of the MSA connective kaðaalika which conveys an additive meaning. It occurs in the data twice in the same text: one time at the sentence level and another time at the paratone level.

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103

(h) ay "that is; i.e." ay is a connective that has an explicative meaning. It is used in LA in exactly the same way it is used in MSA and it occurs only once at the phrase level. (i) amma...,fa.... "as for...,..." amma fa is basically an MSA connective that is used to signal a topic shift; while amma introduces the new topic, fa serves to introduce the comment. It is used only once in the data in a text that displays significant influence of MSA. Table 1 presents a summary of all the connectives discussed above, listed according to their semantic or discourse roles. The numbers obtained are not sufficient to draw statistical conclusions; however, they help show how some connectives such as la-innu, aw, leekin, and bass function mainly at the phrase and clause levels while others such as fa, yapni, izan, ba?a, and halla? perform their functions at higher levels in the texts. This observation points to the important role which these latter connectives perform as cohesive elements in the texts. Some of the discourse functions discussed above are appropriate only in certain kinds of texts; for example, conclusive and explicative roles are generally found only in argumentative discourse. Narrative or descriptive discourse, on the other hand, is more likely to be linked by additive connectives. In the following section, the relationship between the types of cohesive devices and the level at which they operate, on the one hand, and language level, on the other, will be discussed.

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MAHMOUD AL-BATAL

Table 1. Classification of Connectives According to Their Roles Relationship

Connective wa "and" kazeelik "likewise" bi-l-idaafe li-"in addition to" min neehyi teenyi "on the other hand"

| Signaled Additive

Phrase

90

Clause Sentence Paratone Discourse TOTAL]

73

Additive Additive

1

—

39

5

1

1

—

—

Additive

fadlan pan Additive "in

1

—

—

—

—

207 2

—

1

1

1

—

1

addition to"

pada pan innu "besides" aw "or" fa "therefore" izan "therefore" min hoon "hence" bapa "therefore" la-innu "because" fa- "as a result" bass "but" leekin "but" innama "but rather" ma pinnu "although" yapni "i.e." ay "i.e." bi-mapnainnu "i.e." halla? "now" tayyib "all right" dakkoor "all right" amma..,fa "as for"

1

TOTAL

Additive Alternative Conclusive Conclusive Conclusive

1 14

1

5

5 —

—

Conclusive

1 —

1 5 2 —

1

T

4 3

20 13 7 3

2

3

9

2

1

2

14

—

3

—

—

3

Adversative Adversative Adversative

1 2

7 2 3

1

9 4 3

Adversative

1

Causal Causal

Explicative Explicative Explicative Discourse Shift Discourse Switch Discourse Shift Topic Shift

—

5 1

2

1 4

7

1

19 1 1

1

7

2

2

T —

—

—

6

1

1

—

1

—

—

—

1

112

95

68

30

20

325

CONNECTIVES IN ARABIC DIGLOSSIA

105

3. Connecting Patterns and the Levels of LA in the Data An examination of the types of connectives used in each text in the data, their frequency of occurrence, and the levels at which they function reveals four distinct connecting patterns. Each of these patterns, in turn, is associated with certain patterns of language use which may be compared to Badawi's categorization of the levels of Arabic in Egypt today (1973). 10 Although Badawi discusses the linguistic situation in Egypt, not Lebanon, similarities between his study and the present one regarding linguistic and sociolinguistic features permit the use of his categorization of levels as a starting point and basis for comparison.11 Thus, each of these connecting patterns will be seen to represent a different level of LA. The following section will examine the characteristics of each pattern and discuss the level of LA with which it is associated. 3.1 Pattern One: Semi-Educated LA The first connecting pattern can be observed in those texts in the data that have a very high percentage of LA vocabulary and structures and that are dominated by short and simple utterances. This pattern is characterized by a low frequency of connectives overall; the percentage of connectives used ranges between four and six percent of the total number of words in the text. Also, this pattern is characterized by its use of a limited variety of connectives. Texts that reflect this connecting pattern utilized a set of connectives drawn from either the shared LA/MSA category such as wa "and", aw "or", mapinnu "although" or from the LA category such as yapni "in other words" and bass "but". No connectives from the MSA-borrowed group appeared in this pattern. Because most texts associated with this pattern are made up of short utterances, the vast majority of connectives function at the 10

Badawi identifies five different levels of Arabic in Egypt. These levels are:fusha al-turaaθ, "Classical Arabic"; fusha al-pas "Contemporary Standard Arabic"; paammiyyat al-muθaqqafiin "Educated Colloquial"; paamiyyat al-mutanawwiriin "Literate Colloquial" (lit. "Colloquial of the Enlightened People"); and paamiyyat al-Pummiyyiin "Illiterate Colloquial. (1973:89). 11Another reason for using Badawi's classification is that his remains the only study of language levels in Arabic. One major difference between the Badawi's work and the present study is that Badawi did not examine patterns of connectives. The present study suggests that such an examination would yield specific tools with which to measure language level.

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phrase and clause levels. An example of this connecting pattern can be seen in the following text in which a Lebanese woman is complaining over the phone to a radio station about the garbage problems in Beirut: (10) mammozeel hawni Sam -bi-hkii-ki min maktab min maar mademoiselle here CONT. -I- talk-you from an office from Saint ta?la. kill Taqla. Every

šahrayn tleete two months three

ðeeto b-yij-u same come-they

bi-jammp-u u-l-na n-nifeyee iddeem pile up-they-to-us the-garbage in front of

1-maktab. min-bapd ma the office. After that b-yihr?-uu-hun. burn-they-them.

pam -nirjap la-n-nayam CONT -we return to the tone

yjammp-uu-hun šahr pile up-they-them one month

b-yihr?-uu-hun. burn-they-them.

b-yij-u come-they

b-tiitlap ha-d-daxni. it-comes-out his-the-smoke.

bi-fuut d-dibbeen play-na saar map-na marad yapni come-in the flies on-us happened with-us disease you know w-allerjii min ha-d-dixxaan and-allergy from this-the-smoke

1-mijwi. the dirty.

min-dall-na Still-we

n-talfin we-call

b-n-ihki map misyo Fγaalii illi huwwi rapiis 1-baladiyyi. we-speak with Mr. Feghali who he head the-city council. bi-ill-na: "eeh..eeh, tikram-u 1-yoom w-bukra.. " seepa he says-us: "yes..yes, welcome-you today and-tomorrow.." one time bi-?ul-uu-l-na ma fii šaγγiil seepa bi-?ul-uu-l-na 1-kamyuun say-they-to-us not there-is workers a-time say-they-to-us the-truck mpattal kill marra b-yitlap-u b-hijji šikl broken down every time come up-they with-excuse different.... "Mademoiselle, I am talking to you from an office in Saint Taqla [one of East Beirut's quarters]. Every two or three months we return to the same problem; they pile up the garbage in front of our office; a month after that, they come and burn it. The burning causes smoke and brings flies. We have developed diseases from this dirty smoke. We keep calling Mr. Feghali, the Head of the City Council and he keeps telling us 'Yes. . . yes, no problem, today and

CONNECTIVES IN ARABIC DIGLOSSIA

107

tomorrow.' Sometimes they tell us there are no workers, sometimes they say the truck is broken down. Every time they come up with a different excuse."

The above text consists of a series of very short utterances that display only two occurrences of the connective wa. The text is cohesive, but its cohesion relies on lexical repetition and tone of voice rather than on the use of the class of connectives. Lexical cohesion is established through the repetition of words and phrases such as yjammpuu "they pile up", b-yihrpuu-hun "they burn them", duxxaan "smoke", and seepa "one time." Another factor determining the relatively low percentage of connectives here is the descriptive nature of this text. Since the speaker is not presenting an explicit argument, conclusive connectives are not appropriate. Similarly, only one topic is being discussed, so that connectives that mark discourse shift are not needed. The differences between the discourse type of this text and the examples which follow below indicate that there is a relationship between the discourse type of a text and the level of language used. Thus, in addition to the social and educational background of the speaker, discourse type also appears to influence language use. This connecting pattern represents of a level of LA which I will refer to here as 'Semi-Educated LA' since it is predominantly evident in the discourse of semi-educated speakers. The texts examined here that belong to this level were taken from the speech of a cab driver, a barber, a guard, and an office worker. Thus, this level shares the sociolinguistic features of the level of paamiyyat al-mutanawwiriin "Literate Colloquial" described by Badawi.12 3.2 Pattern Two: Educated LA Like the texts dominated by Pattern One, texts that exhibit this pattern also display a high percentage of LA vocabulary and structures. However, Pattern Two texts show more evidence of discourse organization through complex sentence structure and the use of connectives to establish cohesion, as well as occasional MSA influence. These texts exhibit more structural complexity than Pattern One texts since higher structural levels such as sentence, paratone, and discourse 12 The lowest level in Badawi's classification is that of paamiyyat aî-pummiyyiin or "colloquial of the illiterate"; however, my data contain no examples that could be classified as such.

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MAHMOUD AL-BATAL

are in evidence here. Parallel to the more complex sentence structure is the more complex nature of the discourse of most of these texts. Whereas the Pattern One texts were generally narrative or descriptive, Pattern Two texts generally involve explanation or presenting a point of view, although description is also commonly found at this level. This pattern is marked by a higher number of connectives used at all levels; the percentage of connectives used here ranges from seven to nine percent. In addition, connectives used in this pattern show more variety as speakers here draw from different connective categories. Although the majority of connectives utilized in this pattern still come from the first two categories, there is ample evidence of the use of MSA-borrowed connectives. Consider the following example: (11) eeh fi tamyiiz keen been 1-bint w-š-šabb. keen-u Yes, exists discrimination it was between the-girl and-the-boy. were-they yhassis-u š-šabb innu huwwi 1-mitfawwi? deeyman w-haydi make feel-they the-boy that he (is) the-superior always and-this mawjuudi lahaddiit hallap bi-1-mujtamap š-šar?i innu r-rijjeel present until now in-the-society the-Eastern that the-man mitfawwi? pala 1-bint. fa-1-bint min ha-1-muntala? hayda superior on the-girl. Therefore-the-girl from this-the-standpoint this ntala?-it broke-free-she

bi-1-harb 1-libneeniyyi la-t-pabbir San hurriyyit-ha in-the-war the-Lebanese to-she-expresses freedom-her

mumkin la-t-unťiim min mujtamap-h w-ij-it z-zuruuf... possibly to-she-avenges from society-hers...and-came-it the-conditions... 1-yala... ij-it z-zuruuf inn the-rise in prices... came-it the-conditions that

mapaad-it wasiilit no longer-it means

z-zaweej mpammani... fa-min hoon innu ma b-i-staγrib the-marriage available.... therefore-from here that not I-find strange

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109

y-kuun 1-bint pand-ha saahib w-tneen w-tleete w-arbpa it-be the-girl with-her boy friend and-two and-three and-four pa-t-tariipa following-the- style

1-ajnabiyyi the-foreign

"Yes, there was discrimination between the boy and the girl. They used to make the boy always feel that he is the superior [one], and this still exists until today in Eastern Society, that the man is superior to the woman. Therefore, from this standpoint, the girl broke free at the beginning of the Lebanese War to express her freedom, possibly to take revenge on her society. . . and [new] circumstances arose: the rise in prices, it became the case that the means for marriage were no longer available Hence, I do not find it strange that the girl has two, three, or four boyfriends following the foreign [western] model".

In comparing this sample text to the Pattern One text above, we see that more connectives are being used here to link various constituents of the text and mark the discourse movement in the text. The wa in the second line of the text functions at the sentence level signaling an additive relationship between the two sentences connected. In line four, fa functions at the paratone level, signaling that a conclusive relationship exists between the portion of the discourse included in the preceding paragraph and that which follows. In line eight, fa and min hoon jointly function at the discourse level to signal that what follows is a conclusion based on the preceding discourse. Also evident in the above text is the MSA influence reflected in the use of connectives such as fa and lexical items such as mitfawwi? "superior", min ha-lmuntalaP "from this standpoint", ntalapit "she broke free", and wasiilit z-zaweej "means of marriage". Another difference between the Pattern One text (10) and the present one is that this text contains a conclusion, signaled by fa-min hoon "hence". Thus, whereas the Pattern One text was descriptive, this one presents a point of view. On the other hand, this text can be distinguished from those at higher levels by the use of lexical repetition as a cohesive device (lines 6-7), rather than connectives. Lexical repetition was seen to be an important cohesive device in Semi-educated speech. Although Pattern Two speech reflects a greater percentage and range of connectives, the reliance on them for cohesion is not as extensive as in Patterns Three and Four. This connecting pattern marks a level of LA that is noticed in the discourse of educated speakers in general, and particularly in situations

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in which topics of formal nature are discussed. Examples from our data include such topics as marriage, inflation, the impact of the Lebanese War on gender relations, pollution, and health problems. Because of the features they share, this pattern may be associated with Badawi's paamiyyatal-muθaqqafiin or "colloquial of the educated". Here, this level will be referrred to as Educated LA. 3.3 Pattern Three: Formal LA The third connecting pattern may be observed in a small group of texts which display a higher percentage of MSA vocabulary and structures and which contain more structural and discourse complexity than Pattern Two texts. The texts which are dominated by this pattern involve various degrees of argumentation and persuasion. Although the frequency of occurrence of connectives in this pattern does not differ much from that of connectives in Pattern Two, the type of connectives used in this pattern, especially at higher structural levels within the text, is of special significance. For a clearer picture of this pattern, let us consider the following text, which is extracted from a presentation on the development of Lebanese nationalism by a university professor. (12) izan Sala sapiid 1-ard fii-na n-?uul innuu keen fii hadaf: Therefore in regard to the land can-we we-say that it-was there a goal: imma haazihi 1-ard ka-ma hiya 1-mutasarrifiyya imma tawsiip-ha either this the land as-that it (is) the Mutasarrifiyya either expanding-it imrnaa qaliilan imma kathiiran. halla? either a little either much. now

ayyan yakun mawduup whatever (it) be subject

1-ard, yalli keen-u kill-un mittifpiin pl-ee the land, that were-they all-them agreed on it

bi-1-muqaawame in-the-resistance

innu keen yajib iqaamit nizaam hukm jadiid istiqlaali that it was it must establishment system government new independent

CONNECTIVES IN ARABIC DIGLOSSIA

111

yapni 1-kill keen-u mittifpiiin innu b-yisaal-u Sala nizaam it means the-all were-they agreed that -arrive-they at a system dimuqraati ka-1-anzimi illi keen-it pam-titbalwar b-?oroppa democratic like-the-systems that were-they CONT.-crystallizing in-Europe w-l-yarb b-šakl Saam. hawn keen fii wifaaq shibh teem and-the west in-form general. Here was there agreement semi complete Sala tabirpet n-nizaam w-heeda šay? mhimm... bapa akiid on nature the-system and-this a thing important... Therefore certainly 1-yoom yapni ha-1-hadd 1-adna baddu ykuun today that-is this-the-limit the minimum it has (it) be

mawjuud. present.

"Therefore, in regard to the land, we can say that there was a goal: either to keep this land as it was during the Mutasarrifiyya Period or to expand it, either slightly or greatly. Now, whatever the issue of the land was, those in the resistance agreed on the necessity of establishing a new independent system of government. They all were in agreement that they should reach a democratic system of government similar to those that were forming in Europe and in the West in general. There was consensus on the nature of the system, and this is important. Therefore, it is certain today that this minimum limit should exist."

The argumentative discourse nature of this text is clear. It was noted above that discourse type appears to be one of the factors that determine language level. Patterns One and Two generally coincide with such discourse types as narration, description, and point of view. Similarly, the argumentative nature of this text plays a role in determining language level and connecting pattern. The speaker in (12) uses connectives to compare and contrast political positions, to support an argument, and to draw a conclusion. Thus, the more complex nature of this discourse type requires a greater reliance on connectives for cohesion. The above text is clearly dominated by MSA vocabulary and structures, as may be seen in the use of expressions such as pala sapiid "in regard to", imma haazihi l-ard "either this land", ka-ma hiya "as it is", ayyan yakun mawduup "whatever the issue", and l-hadd l-adna "the minimum limit". While this dominance of MSA in the text would lead one to expect a similar dominance of MSA-borrowed connectives

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(as is the case in Pattern Four, which will be discussed next), such is not the case here. Most of the connectives, especially those marking the movement of the discourse in the text, are drawn from the LA category as is evidenced by the use of hallaP, yapni, and ba?a in the above sample. In this sense, there is a mismatch in the above text between the level of language that characterizes the text overall and the type of connectives used. Such a mismatch is not limited to this text alone but is observed in a number of other texts in the data as well. This mismatch justifies the classification of these texts as a separate connecting pattern. This particular connecting pattern has been observed in the data in discourses produced by a number of Christian Lebanese intellectuals who are strong advocates of Lebanese Nationalism. These intellectuals belong to a very active ideological camp that stresses the uniqueness of the 'Lebanese' culture vis-à-vis the 'Arabic/Islamic' culture and that conceives of the language used in Lebanon as 'Lebanese' rather than 'Arabic.' 13 The discourse produced by these intellectuals exhibits a conscious effort to emphasize the 'Lebanese' character of the language. In the above text, the use of LA rather than MSA connectives represents one possible strategy for the realization of such emphasis. It may be concluded, therefore, that the use of these LA connectives is intentional and is meant mainly to create some distance between the speaker and the typical educated MSA discourse that is used by a significant number of intellectuals in Lebanon. The fact that this connecting pattern is observed in a number of texts similar to the one presented above suggests the existence of a particular level of LA that is distinguished from the 'Educated LA' level by its complex structures and MSA-based vocabulary and that is distinguished from the next level by its heavy reliance on LA connectives. Thus, this pattern represents a unique level that we will call 'Formal LA' and that is situated on the linguistic continuum somewhere between the 'Educated LA' level and the 'Lebanese MSA' level that will be discussed in the following section.

13

Among the best known advocates of these views are the Lebanese poet Said Aql, the linguist Anis Frayha, and the historian Fuad Ifram Al-Bustani who have all calied for the Latinization of the Arabic script. See Frayha (1955) for a detailed discussion of this proposal.

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3.4 Pattern Four: Lebanese MSA14 The fourth pattern of connectives in the data is noticed in texts that display a remarkably high percentage of MSA vocabulary and structures. These texts are also characterized by a high frequency of connectives overall where the percentage of connectives used ranges between ten and thirteen percent. As in Pattern Three, a significant number of connectives in this pattern function at higher levels of the text, but unlike Pattern Three, most of the connectives found in Pattem Four texts are drawn from the MSA-borrowed category. This use of MSA connectives is in harmony with the level of language used and the mismatch which was discernible in the previous pattem is not evident in this level. The following text, taken from an interview with a former prime minister of Lebanon, provides a good example of this pattern: (13) ka-zeelik 1-amr bi-n-nisbe li-majmuupa min s-siyeesiyiin fî like-that the-issue in-the-relation to-a group of the-politicians in ameerka laasiyyama 1-kongres yalli tapaxxar ktiir w-yalli America especially the-Congress which it was late much and-which ahjam San ibraam ha-l-ittifaa?iyye w-yalli it refrained from ratifying this-the-agreement and-which lahaddiit eexer lahza ya-tatallab tapdiilaat until last minute it-demands revisions

bu?i it remained

wa-tawdiihaat and-clarifications

mupayyane hatta yi-tma?inn bi-innu ittifaqiyyet specific so as it-becomes sure that agreement

izeelit removing

s-sawaariix min pooroppa bi-ylee?im 1-maslha 1-amriikiyya the-missiles from Europe it suits the-interest the-American 1-Sulyaa iSan lamma npaqad-it the-supreme. Therefore when was held-it

14

qimmat summit

moosko Moscow

The label 'Lebanese MSA' is not intended to imply an absence of MSA in Lebanon, or that this level of Arabic is unique to Lebanon. It is used here merely to indicate the influence of Lebanese forms on this language level. However, the argument that this level exists clearly suggest that spoken MSA needs to be more closely studied in various dialect areas.

114

MAHMOUD AL-BATAL npaqad-it was held-it

li-tatwiij haaða for-putting a cap on this

1-mawaadip hiya the-issues they (are)

1-asees the-base

l-?uxra the-other

leehiqa. secondary.

fa-hiya -they are

1-mawduup... haaðihi the-issue these

wa-amma l-mawaadiip and-as for the-issues

"The same applies to a group of politicians in the US, especially the Congress, which was too late and which refrained from ratifying this agreement and which, up to the last minute, kept demanding clarifications and revisions in order to make sure that the agreement of missile elimination from Europe served American interests. Therefore, when the Moscow Summit was held, it was held to put an end to this issue. . . . These are the basic issues; as for other issues, they are secondary."

In the above text, there is clear dominance of MSA vocabulary and structures. The influence of LA is only noticeable at the phonological level, in the use of the phoneme /z/ instead of / S / , as in kazeelik, and the use of /t/ instead of / 0 / as in ktiir, and at the lexical level, in the use of the relative pronoun yalli in place of allaðii and la-haddii instead of hatta. The argumentative nature of this text is comparable to that of the Pattern Three text, which indicates that the difference between Patterns Three and Four is not so much one of discourse type or higher level of language as it is a socio-linguistic difference that reflects the Lebanese socio-political context. Thus, the distinction between these two patterns may or may not exist in other dialect areas. The connecting pattern represented here is associated with a level of LA which may be referred to as 'Lebanese MSA'. This level represents the level of natural spoken discourse that appears to be closest to Badawi's fusha al-pasr or MSA. 15 Unlike the speaker in the 'Formal LA' text who utilized LA connectives to distance his speech from MSA, the speaker here is making an effort to produce as close a discourse to MSA as is possible in an unprepared and unrehearsed interview. The choice of MSA-based connectives in this discourse 15

In view of the lack of studies available on natural spoken MSA, this claim must remain unsubstantiated. The relationship of spoken to written MSA and to what has been termed 'Formal Spoken Arabic' has yet to be investigated, especially at the discourse level.

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appears to be at least partly motivated by sociolinguistic factors such as the speaker's status as former prime minister of Lebanon and his advocacy of Arab nationalism. All of these factors contribute to the level of the language used. 4. Connectives and Diglossia: Past and present observations Now that we have examined the various types of connectives and connecting patterns in the data and linked them to the different levels of LA, let us turn to the observations that can be made regarding the use of connectives in LA. These observations will then be related to those based on the written MSA text in order to draw conclusions on the use of connectives in Arabic in general. From the description of the various categories of connectives and the connecting patterns in the data, it becomes clear that the use of connectives in Lebanese Arabic involves a considerable degree of complexity. This complexity is manifested in our data by (a) the existence of three different sets of connectives in LA, (b) the large number of connectives used and the wide range of relationships they signal, and (c) the direct links that exist between the various connecting patterns and the multiple levels of LA. The existence of three distinct sets of connectives in LA shows that this spoken variety of Arabic provides its speakers with a wide variety of options from which to choose. As has been indicated in the foregoing discussion, this choice is usually influenced by a number of sociolinguistic and pragmatic factors. Among the factors which were apparent in our data is the level of education, where we saw a difference in the types of connectives used between the discourse of semi-educated and educated speakers. A second factor is the type of discourse used: argumentative discourse tends to display more frequent use of connectives than narrative or descriptive discourse. A third factor is the ideological stance of the speaker vis-à-vis the Arabic/Islamic culture in general and the Arabic language in particular. We have seen how the choice of connectives in patterns Three and Four is influenced by the speaker's attempt to distance himself from MSA in the former and by the other speaker's attempt to produce more MSAlike discourse in the latter. An important point that needs to be emphasized here, however, is that these three different categories of connectives should not be

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perceived as three separate and rigid entities but should rather be viewed as groupings of connectives along a continuum. There is a considerable degree of overlap both among the categories themselves and in the way speakers use these categories. The present data clearly demonstrate that connectives from the various categories can coexist in the same text. Similarly, a speaker can, for example, use the LA connective ba?a "therefore" to indicate a conclusive meaning in certain contexts and use the MSA-borrowed fa to indicate the same meaning in other contexts. There is a constant process of shifting back and forth among these various categories, and this shifting is but one aspect of the level shifting process that takes place in the spoken varieties of Arabic. 16 The complexity manifested by the multiplicity and diversity in meanings of connectives in our LA data overall is similar to that exhibited in written MSA texts (see Al-Batal 1985, 1990). While it is true that the level of complexity will show great disparity if a comparison is drawn between a written MSA text and the semieducated level of LA as a representative of LA, this disparity will be true of only that level and not of Lebanese Arabic as a whole. To take only one level of LA and compare its use of connectives with MSA, while perfectly legitimate, would yield partially true results that can, by no means, be descriptive of the use of connectives in the dialect overall. Through an examination of the use of connectives in ALL levels of LA, a level of complexity emerges that is parallel to that observed in MSA. Another indicator of the complexity of connectives in LA can be seen in the links that exist between the use of connectives and the various levels in LA. On the one hand, each of four connecting patterns discussed may be seen to reflect a particular level of LA and is shaped by the same sociolinguistic and pragmatic factors that shape this level. On the other hand, the use of connectives appears at times to play a crucial role in determining the character of certain levels as was the case with the Formal LA level, which was distinguished from the Lebanese MSA level by its particular use of LA connectives. These close ties between connectives and the levels of LA suggest that the 16 Clearly, further study of the sociolinguistic and pragmatic factors influencing the speaker's choice of connective category is needed. Work done by Gumperz (1982), among others, on the social meanings of code-switching may be helpful in explaining why speakers shift between categories.

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analysis of connectives can provide us with valuable insight into the dynamics of the various levels not only in LA but in all other spoken varieties of Arabic as well. Studies pertaining to the various levels of Arabic have thus far paid little or no attention to the way in which connectives are used at the various levels. The present study shows that by so doing, these studies have overlooked an important aspect of the study of language levels. The observations made in the present study, coupled with those made previously on the use of connectives in written MSA, demonstrate that there is a great deal of continuity among the various levels of Arabic, on the one hand, and between its spoken and written varieties, on the other hand. In the written text, connectives were seen to function at the various levels of structure and to mark the flow of the discourse in the text. In addition, the use of connectives was related to argumentation and presentation in the text. The present study has clearly shown that these observations are true of the use of connectives in LA as well. Connectives in LA also exist at all levels and also serve to mark the progression of the discourse. Similarly, argumentative texts in the data tended to use more connectives as was the case in the written text. This suggests that, regardless of whether the text is a written MSA or spoken LA text and regardless of whether the connectives used are MSA, MSA-borrowed, or LA, the rhetorical constraints are the same across the two varieties of the language. While the frequency of occurrence of connectives observed in the written MSA text (sixteen percent of total number of words) is higher than that noticed in spoken LA texts at the various levels, this difference should be perceived in terms of the difference between written and spoken forms of the language and not be seen as evidence of two distinct connecting patterns. The spoken form of the language provides the speaker with cohesive devices such as intonation, tone, and pause which are not available in its written form.17 Thus, the need to use more connectives as cohesive elements becomes greater with the written text than it is with spoken discourse. When spoken discourse becomes closer to the written form, a considerable increase in the percentage of connectives is noticed, as was the case with the Lebanese 17 For a discussion of the differences between spoken and written discourse, see Brown & Yule (1984).

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MSA level. This is another example of the continuity between the spoken and written forms of Arabic. An examination of the various types and frequencies of connectives at the various levels in the LA data and the comparison of these with types and frequencies in the written MSA text reveals that there is a gradual progression along a continuous continuum. At one end of this continuum is the 'Semi-Educated' LA level and at its other end is the written MSA text with all the other levels in between. While looking at the use of connectives at one end of the continuum would reveal sharp differences with the way they are used at the other extreme, looking at the progression along the continuum would reveal a more harmonious picture of the use of connectives in Arabic. These observations lend strong support to the idea of the multileveled nature of Arabic and underscore the continuity of all these levels as well as the written and spoken varieties of the language. Consequently, they suggest that the study of any aspect of the language cannot be thorough if it is carried out on only one variety or one level without consideration of the other variety and levels.

REFERENCES Al-Batal, Mahmoud. 1985. The Cohesive Role of Connectives in a Modern Expository Arabic Text. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. . 1990. "Connectives as Cohesive Elements in a Modern Expository Arabic Text". Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics II ed. by Mushira Eid & John McCarthy, 234-268 (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 72). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Badawi, El-Said M. 1973. Mustawayaat al-cArabiyya al-MucaasirafiiMisr (Levels of Contemporary Arabic in Egypt). Cairo: Dar al-Maarif. Brown, Gillian & George Yule. 1984. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brustad, Kristen. 1991. The Comparative Syntax of Four Arabic Dialects: An investigation of selected topics. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Frayha, Anis. 1955. Nahwa cArabiyya Muyassara (Towards a Simplified Arabic). Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafa. Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Halliday, Michael & Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman. El-Hassan, Shahir A. 1977. "Educated Spoken Arabic in Egypt and the Levant: A critical review of diglossia and related concepts". Archivum Linguisticun 8:2.112-132. Lyons, John. 1978. Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meiseles, Gustav. 1980. "Educated Spoken Arabic and the Arabic Language Continuum". ArchivumLinguisticwn 11:1.118-143. Mitchell, Terry. 1978. "Educated Spoken Arabic in Egypt and the Levant, with Special Reference to Participle and Tense". Journal of Linguistics 14.227-258. Van Dijk, Teun A. 1977. "Connectives in Text Grammar and Text Logic". Grammars and Descriptions ed. by Teun Van Dijk & Janos S. Petöfi, 11-63. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

CLASSICAL ARABIC IN CONTACT: THE TRANSITION TO NEAR CATEGORICAL AGREEMENT PATTERNS* R.. Kirk Belnap Brigham Young University John Gee Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies

1. Introduction Scholars generally agree that the language contact situation resulting from the spread of Islam had a profound effect on the development of vernacular varieties of Arabic (Ferguson 1959; Fischer & Jastrow 1980). By the ninth century (CE.), imperfect learning of Arabic on the part of new converts—owing to this language contact situation—was perceived as a threat to the correct transmission and future comprehension of the Qur'an. As a result, organized efforts were undertaken to preserve the language of the Qur'an and to codify Classical Arabic.1

*We have benefited greatly from discussions with Kent Brown, Michael Carter, Charles Ferguson, Joseph Greenberg, Wilfred Griggs, George Makdisi, Michael Morony, Dilworth Parkinson, Daniel Peterson, Stephen Ricks, Royal Skousen, Keith Walters, and Michael Zwettler. We thank them for their helpful comments and suggestions, but acknowledge that this paper does not necessarily reflect their views. 1Following Fischer (1971-2), we differentiate between literary Pre-Islamic Arabic and Classical Arabic. We use 'Old Arabic' as a cover term to refer to the language of pre-Islamic poetry, the language of the Qur'an, and that of subsequent formal literature. Old Arabic is not restricted to literary or formal registers or varieties of Arabic; it also includes vernacular peninsular dialects which were of the same, more synthetic type.

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The debate continues as to whether the efforts of the early Arab grammarians were merely descriptive (Blau 1963) or whether they were normative in nature (Fischer 1971-2). If they were normative, then the language contact situation of the early Islamic era led not only to changes in Spoken Arabic but also, to some degree, to changes in what is generally called Classical Arabic (in that the carabiyya was standardized, or further standardized than it had been before Islam). In this paper, we propose that other structural changes took place in Classical Arabic, previous to the efforts of the grammarians, and that these changes are the result of the language contact situation arising from the spread of Islam, and Arabic, outside the Arabian Peninsula. Few would argue that literary Arabic has remained unchanged since the spread of Islam. New developments in the lexicon are widely acknowledged (Saad 1975:69). For many who view CA as a single entity spanning pre-Islamic poetry to the Qur'an to the literary output of the Golden Age of Islam (and even to modern literature), the notion of change in OA is almost unthinkable. Some, however, have openly acknowledged historical developments in OA. For example, Fischer (1971-2) maintained that the difference between the perfect and the imperfect verb was primarily aspectual in Pre-Islamic Old Arabic but came to signify essentially a past/present tense distinction in Classical Arabic. Fischer also cited differences between what he calls the pre-classical and classical use of certain particles, such as qad and Pilla, as additional evidence of this change (1971-2:17-18). Saad (1975) cited several instances of morphological and syntactic changes in Old Arabic. He referred to these changes in terms of the transition from Classical to Modern Standard Arabic. The morphological changes he discussed are largely the loss of low frequency verb forms. His examples of syntactic change included causative analytical constructions replacing morphologically derived verb forms. He also stated that some forms were semantically re­ analyzed. Saad did not attempt to determine when these changes might have taken place, nor did he discuss why they took place. In neither of these papers did we find analyses approaching a thorough study of the points raised. Fischer readily admitted that he was only making passing remarks; the historical changes themselves were not the focus of his paper, but only examples in support of his thesis that CA is not a single, unchanging entity from the sixth century

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to the present. Historical change is the focus of Saad's study but it is rather brief. Methodology was not discussed in either of these papers, and examples are generally undocumented. Corriente (1976) offered one of the most thorough diachronic considerations of the development of CA from Pre-Islamic OA. Maintaining that the grammarians forged a standardized variety, he emphasized "that they did not start this process (pre-Islamic koineization did), that furthermore their prescriptive role was largely one of application and homogenization of pre-existing models (OA poetry, the Qur'an, formal register Arabic of contemporary eloquent Bedouins)" (1976:71). Corriente assembled an impressive amount of evidence—mainly from the works of the grammarians—attesting to the extensive variation found in Arabic dialects and texts prior to the efforts of the grammarians. However, although his examples are well documented, he does not attempt to examine in detail any of the numerous points he raises. Like Fischer, these points serve to illustrate his thesis and are not the focus of the paper. Most of the Western scholarship on the history of OA has centered on the origins of the modern Arabic dialects. (See Miller (1986) for a review of some of the more viable theories.) Work dealing particularly with the history of CA, such as that of Fischer and Corriente, has focused almost exclusively on the role of the early Arab grammarians in the standardization of CA. Other factors have either not been considered, were not deemed worthy of discussion, or were discussed only briefly. An example of the latter is Beeston (1975), in which adjective agreement variation in Pre-Islamic Arabic is briefly discussed. Studies focusing on one grammatical topic and tracing its development through time are rare. Belnap (1991), however, provided carefully documented evidence for historical change in Old Arabic patterns of grammatical agreement. Using quantitative evidence, the study demonstrated that a system of complex variable agreement patterns in the fifth, sixth, and seventh century became a much simplified system by the tenth century. For example, (1), (2) and (3) illustrate common patterns of agreement with nonhuman plural head nouns in Pre-Islamic and

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Qur'anic Arabic.2 These agreement types do not necessarily occur in isolation; they may also co-occur with the same head, as exemplified in (4). (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

Feminine plural agreement: ?ayyaam-an mapduud-aat-in days limited (f.pl.) "...a few days..." (Qur'an, II, 184) Feminine singular (deflected)3 agreement: ?ayyaam-an mapduud-at-an days limited (f.sg.) "...a few days..." (Qur'an, II, 80) Broken plural agreement: wa-š-šiyam-i s-sawaalih and-the-practices the-good (broken pl.) "...and the pious practices..." (Al-Xansaa', 31) Mixed Agreement: 6iyaab-u bani pawf-in tahaaraa naqiyyat-un robes tribe awf pure (broken pl.) clean (f.sg.) "The robes of the Bani Awf are pure and clean". (Imru' Al-Qays, 80)

In Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), deflected agreement with nonhuman head nouns, as in (2), is nearly categorical; the strict agreement, both sound and broken, found in (1) and (3) is quite rare.4 In this paper we address how such a change, or simplification, might have taken place. Change is a natural part of the life of a language, and language contact is perhaps the most effective change-inducing catalyst. One can 2

This variation is not limited to agreement with nonhuman heads. See Belnap (1991:129-131) for a discussion of agreement variation with human head nouns. We use the term 'head noun' to refer to a noun co-occurring with another element which agrees with it, such as an adjective, verb, or pronoun. 3 See Ferguson (1989:11-15) on the use of deflected and strict agreement. In the case of strict agreement, some category that is overtly or inherently present in the "controller (subject or head-noun) is copied in the 'target' (verb, noun-modifier)" (Ferguson 1989:9). Deflected agreement, on the other hand, indicates some feature mismatch, such as feminine singular agreement with plural head nouns. 4 Remnants of these strict agreement patterns survive today, mostly in literary usage. This phenomenon is discussed in Belnap (1991:128-129). Beeston (1975:66) noted the survival of a different pattern: the tendency of color adjectives to sometimes show plural agreement with nonhuman heads in modern literary writing. This type did not appear in Belnap's MSA corpus.

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hardly imagine an extended language contact situation which does not significantly influence one or more of the varieties in contact. In this paper, we argue that Written (or Formal) Old Arabic, like the vernacular, was a variety in contact, and that this contact situation measurably affected its historical development. We suggest that much of the change OA has undergone since the spread of Islam is due to its language contact history. Our thesis is not a radical or particularly new idea, but this perspective has not been clearly articulated, or at least not fully so, in such a way as to bear on the history of CA.5 Following this introduction, Section 2 discusses the corpus which constituted the data for this study and the methods we used in collecting and analyzing it. Section 3 gives an overview of OA agreement variation in the corpus and then focuses on adjectival agreement. The data suggest that OA agreement changed from a largely strict agreement system to a system also exhibiting a considerable amount of deflected agreement. Section 4 addresses different aspects of contact-induced change—including substratum influence and second language learning strategies—that may have contributed to the change in OA Arabic agreement patterns. Section 5 summarizes our findings and arguments. 2. The Data The data for this study consisted of texts previously analyzed and described in Belnap (1991). In order to increase the total number of examples or tokens examined, we increased the sample size from the original sources. For example, we increased the size of our PreIslamic Poetry sample from 25 to 233 tokens. Table 1 lists the texts represented in our corpus. The size of the sample taken from each text varied. Two considerations governed the size of the sample taken from each source: the desire for a representative sample of tokens and the size of the text itself (the Pre-Islamic poetry sources are limited in size). Table 2 indicates the number and sources of the tokens included in this analysis. 5

Corriente (1976) provided an excellent treatment of the language contact situation arising from the spread of Islam. In this paper, we address one aspect not considered by Corriente, educated nonnative speakers' acquisition and use of Formal Arabic and the possible impact of this process on CA.

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R. KIRK BELNAP & JOHN GEE TABLE 1. Texts included in the data base Author/Text Imru' al-Qays Tarafa c Antara Al-Xansaa' Qur'an Ibn Hisham Al-Mascudi Al-Hariri Ibn Khaldoun

Century 6th 6th 6th 7th 7th 8th 10th 11th 14th

Text Type poetry poetry poetry poetry scripture narrative prose prose rhymed prose prose

In analyzing the data, we followed the methods employed in Belnap (1991) and described there in detail (1991:118-120). In short, head nouns and accompanying agreement loci were identified and coded for a variety of factors. For example, each plural head noun was recorded and coded for morphological type (e.g., sound or broken plural) and animacy status (human, animal, or inanimate). Each locus of agreement was also coded for morphological type, as well as the type of agreement which obtained (feminine singular, feminine sound plural, or broken plural), and the type of the locus (adjective, verb, anaphoric pronoun, demonstrative pronoun, or relative pronoun). 3. Agreement in Pre-Islamic and early Classical Arabic Belnap & Shabaneh (1992) reported the first quantitative study of agreement variation in Old Arabic. It documented the considerable variation found in Pre-Islamic poetry and in the Qur'an and showed that this kind of variation was extremely limited or nonexistent in texts from subsequent periods. Based on the apparent movement of the change through agreement categories over time, Belnap & Shabaneh (1992) concurred with Beeston (1975), who essentially proposed a

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TABLE 2. Overview of Old Arabic agreement with nonhuman plural heads Adj . % Pron. % Total % Verb. % Imru' al-Qays (6th cent.) fem. sg.: 3 13 8 62 6 75 17 3 8 fem. pl.: 7 29 5 38 2 25 14 31 0 0 0 0 14 31 broken pl.: 14 58 24 Total: 8 45 13 Tarafa 34 7 2 3 30 (6th cent.) fem. sg.: 16 8 0 15 8 8 1 10 4 20 2 12 7 15 fem. pl.: broken pl.: 6 60 0 0 6 13 0 0 Total: 10 17 47 20 c Antara (6th cent.) fem. sg.: 3 19 69 7 8 36 9 5 30 86 fem. pl.: 2 13 2 5 5 14 9 10 0 0 0 0 11 12 broken pl.: 11 69 Total: 16 35 89 38 Al-Xansaa' 2 (7th cent.) fem. sg.: 9 8 80 25 4 8 15 7 9 fem. p l : 8 35 4 21 2 20 14 27 broken pl.: 13 57 0 0 0 0 13 25 Total: 23 19 10 10 52 Qur'an (7th cent.) fem. sg.: 10 4 8 49 100 52 96 111 9 0 8 38 0 2 4 10 8 fem. pl.: 0 broken p l : 3 14 3 2 0 0 0 0 21 54 124 Total: 49 5 Ibn Hishaam 2 100 4 80 (8th cent.) fem. sg.: 11 100 17 9 4 fem. p l : 0 0 1 20 0 0 1 6 broken pl.: Total: 2 5 11 18 Al-Mascudi 4 100 (10th cent.)fem. sg.: 22 100 2 100 28 1 0 0 fem. pl.: broken pl.: 4 100 2 100 22 100 28 100 Total: Al-Hariri 124 9 2 (11th cent.)fem. sg.: 41 9 1 62 9 3 21 9 1 fem. pl.: 0 0 2 7 5 5 7 9 broken pl .: 4 9 0 0 0 0 4 3 Total: 45 67 23 135 Ibn Khaldoun (14th cent.)fem. sg.: 72 100 64 100 141 1 0 0 5 100 fem. p l : broken pl.: Total: 72 100 5 100 64 100 141 100

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wave model of change to account for this historical change in OA.6 Since that earlier study, we have enlarged our corpus and included a wider variety of Pre-Islamic and early Islamic texts. The results are displayed in Table 2 (rates of deflected agreement are shown in bold).7 The same overall pattern found in the data reported in Belnap & Shabaneh (1992) still holds for the expanded corpus which forms the basis for this paper. Table 2 shows that agreement variation was quite common in the earlier texts and increasingly less so in subsequent texts. The samples from pre-Islamic poetry suggest that a good deal of variation existed at that time, and that the poets themselves differed somewhat from each other in their respective use of agreement. Tarafa and cAntara appear to have been the most advanced in the use of deflected agreement, that is, they appear to be leading in the growing use of deflected agreement. For all of these pre-Islamic poets, however, deflected agreement is far more common in the verbal and pronominal agreement categories than in the adjectival category. The differences between the poets may be the result of regional dialectal preferences; they may also reflect the size of the sample or additional conditioning factors such as those discussed in

6

Beeston observed: The use of the feminine singular concord with 'irrational' substantives is a neologism in Arabic which only gradually won its way to becoming the norm. It looks as if it made its first appearance in the domain of the pronouns..., and then spread to other domains. (1975:65-66) In adopting the wave theory of change, Beeston may or may not have been correct, as discussed in Belnap (1991:127). However, it is clear that a change took place. 7 Table 2 does not include tokens of verbs occurring in prenominal position (when a verb precedes its subject, the difference between feminine singular and plural agreement is neutralized), nor does it include instances of neutralized adjective agreement. Relative, demonstrative, and anaphoric pronoun tokens are all grouped under the pronominal category. They do not appear to behave differently from one another; the corpus contained only one relative pronoun and six demonstrative pronouns. Ibn Hisham's work actually contains far more agreement tokens than listed in Table 2. Most of these occur in citations from the Qur'an or in verses of poetry. We included the Qur'anic material from Ibn Hisham's work with the other samples from the Qur'an. The poetry cited in his work was excluded from consideration because we were unable to date the material readily. Agreement patterns in this excluded poetic material corresponded fairly closely to those found in the pre-Islamic poetry. We also excluded one tokenfroma line of poetry cited by Al-Mascudi.

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connection with modern agreement variation in Egyptian Arabic in Belnap (1991).8 Some might argue that the differences in agreement frequencies between the poets reflect the demands of meter. To some extent, this argument is probably valid. If there were no clear pattern in the usage of the poets, we would suspect that they were exploiting agreement options according to metrical considerations.9 However, given the fact that all three poets show similar patterning in overall usage—deflected agreement being infrequent in the adjectival category but predominant in the other two categories—we feel confident that the poets' agreement usage is representative of agreement patterns of the time, or of a not too distant time. We discuss additional evidence below which further supports this analysis. The distribution of deflected agreement in the sample from the Qur'an parallels the pre-Islamic poets' usage, but the frequencies are all somewhat higher in the Qur'an. This suggests a possible change in progress at the time, particularly given that subsequent samples show categorical or near categorical deflected agreement. If this change had taken place a few centuries later, one might suspect attempts at standardization. As it is, the change was clearly well on its way to completion before the Arab grammarians set about to codify Classical Arabic. Further, we have found no evidence of a conscious attempt on their part to regularize agreement. We, therefore, look elsewhere for the causes of the change. At first glance, Table 2 appears to document nothing more than a change which was already well in progress in the earliest of our texts and which went to completion by the tenth century.10 That is, 8

For example, increased distance from the head, measured in number of words, favors strict agreement in Cairene; analysis of the pre-Islamic and Qur'anic samples of the corpus suggests the same. In Cairene and in these early OA texts, the relevant distinction is not necessarily human/nonhuman, as in MSA; an animacy or saliency hierarchy appears to better account for the data (See Belnap 1991:61-85). 9 A disadvantage of a poetic corpus is that it may not reflect then-current usage: the language may be somewhat archaic—possibly consisting of formulae preserving a much older stage of the language. On the other hand, poetry has the advantage that it is less likely than prose to be regularized by copyists or editors, precisely due to the demands of meter. 10 We assume Al-Hariri's more literary style preserves relic patterns, just as some higher styles of literary Arabic today preserve remnants of strict agreement, as mentioned in footnote 4.

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deflected agreement apparently spread through various grammatical categories; our corpus begins at an already advanced stage of the change and documents the essentially complete transition from strict to deflected agreement. Of course, such a change is of interest in and of itself—particularly given that the change has not previously been widely acknowledged. But this change is of even further interest, as we shall see. Interpreting Table 2 as simply evidence of a change in progress which went to completion shortly after the rise of Islam would be a perfectly legitimate solution, were it not for other evidence which complicates the picture. Belnap (1991) demonstrated empirically that much of the same kind of agreement variation which was present in Old Arabic is found in modern Cairene Arabic. Other vernacular varieties of Arabic also preserve similar agreement variation. In Cowell (1964), we found that Damascus Arabic exhibits similar agreement variation. As a result, we ask ourselves: If the change was in its final throes in the seventh and eighth centuries why is it preserved in some of the major modern Arabic dialects?11 Normally, one would expect the spoken vernacular to have reached a more advanced stage of a change than the more formal registers (such as the language of scripture). Today (and apparently in the tenth century), we find the opposite: with regard to agreement, the spoken language appears to be more conservative than the written language. We should mention that Table 2 can be interpreted in other ways: a change in progress rapidly going to completion is not the only possible analysis. The variation noted in Table 2 may have been quite stable in all regions, or a slow change may have been underway, or it may have even arrested; the higher frequencies found in the Qur'an and in Ibn Hisham may mean that the Hijaz was merely more advanced in the change (either in the ongoing change or at the time the change arrested). Stable variation in agreement systems and in other systems showing variation are well attested; in fact, they are the rule (Labov, ms.). For example, although variation is exhibited in the agreement system of Popular Spoken Brazilian Portuguese, Guy (ms.) 11Of course, this assumes that the modern dialects preserve agreement patterns from Old Arabic—which, as Ferguson has suggested, is a far more likely possibility than that they independently developed such patterns again (1989:15).

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argues that no change is underway and that the variation has been around for centuries. Closer to home, agreement variation found in the dialects of Cairo and Damascus share some striking similarities with patterns of agreement found in the Middle Arabic of the Christian Palestinian texts examined in Blau (1966-67), most of which date before 1000 C.E. In other words, at least some aspects of agreement variation in vernacular Arabic have apparently been somewhat stable for more than a millenium. One might also propose that the differences between the various texts are purely a matter of style. After all, the earlier samples in the corpus are literary while later samples tend to be scholarly. Such an interpretation would be a viable alternative were it not for the evidence from the modern dialects. If strict agreement were only a grammatical relic preserved in certain genres, how do we account for the fact that modern vernacular varieties preserve agreement patterns similar to those found in the poetry of the sixth and seventh centuries? The most straightforward answer to this question is that these variable agreement patterns were very much a part of seventh and eighth century vernacular speech. These dialects, spoken by Arabs who had migrated from the Peninsula, formed the basis of at least some of the modern dialects.12 Determining how fast the change was moving—if it was in fact a change in progress—-would be quite difficult, perhaps impossible. The texts in our corpus do not represent a monolithic variety of Arabic. Major geographical and genre differences are represented in the corpus. What is clear, however, is that Classical Arabic agreement patterns are not the same as those found in Pre-Islamic and Qur'anic Arabic. A rather complex agreement system somehow evolved into a simpler, nearly categorical system. We turn now to consider possible reasons why agreement in CA is less like that of the Pre-Islamic 12

These variable agreement patterns may have also existed in the sedentary or Nabati Arabic already spoken before Islam in the Northern Hijaz, Iraq and Syria; Corriente argued that this variety of Arabic became the basis for the urban dialects (1976:8889). If Corriente was right, we suspect Nabati Arabic exhibited variable agreement, otherwise we have to assume these patterns were passed from Peninsular dialect speakers to Nabati Arabic speakers. If Nabati Arabic had the sufficient numbers of speakers or the prestige to become the dominant urban variety it is not clear why—or how—speakers would adopt agreement patterns from Peninsular dialects.

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c

arabiyya and more like that of some modern vernacular varieties of Arabic. TABLE 3. Adjective agreement with nonhwnan broken plurals by adjective type B-type Adjectives S-type Adjectives %FSG %FPL BrPL% Total N %FSG %FPL Total N Imru' al-Qays 6 6 88 16 29 71 7 Tarafa 0 0 100 6 67 33 3 c Antara 8 0 92 12 33 67 3 Al-Xansaa' 0 25 12 7 75 71 29 Qur'an 0 0 100 71 29 14 3 Ibn Hisham 100 1 1 0 0 100 0 Al-Mascudi 4 0 100 0 Al-Hariri 43 0 7 57 100 0 35 Ibn KhaldounlOO 0 0 5 100 0 60

In Table 2, we saw that adjectival agreement shows the highest percentages of strict (plural) agreement and is supposedly the most conservative agreement locus. Table 3 provides a closer look at adjectival agreement (deflected agreement percentages are shown in bold print). Strict agreement (both broken plural and feminine plural) with nonhuman broken plural heads is strongly favored in the PreIslamic poetry. In the Qur'an we note a change, however: deflected agreement has become the favored option for adjectives allowing only a sound plural (S-type adjectives). In other words, feminine singular agreement with broken plural heads has largely displaced feminine plural agreement with these adjectives. For example, (1) would have been the favored choice before the Qur'an whereas (2) predominates in the Qur'an and later texts. As in the Pre-Islamic poetry, broken plural agreement is still the rule in the Qur'an for adjectives allowing a broken plural (B-type adjectives). Soon after the Qur'an, it appears that this preference changed. Because the number of tokens for this period are few, we must be cautious, but the trend is nevertheless clear: After the Qur'an, broken plural agreement falls off sharply. Before the Qur'an, we find near categorical broken plural adjective agreement with broken plural heads, but after the Qur'an we find that categorical feminine singular agreement soon replaces the broken plural pattern. In the rhymed

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prose of Al-Hariri, remnants of the previous system are preserved. We would predict that a literary work would preserve older patterns. The transition from predominantly feminine plural agreement to categorical feminine singular agreement in S-type adjectives is quite gradual. Again, this change would seem to be natural, that is, a change which was underway and went to completion without the undue influence of external factors. On the other hand, for B-type adjectives the transition from near categorical broken plural agreement to essentially categorical deflected agreement was quite rapid. Apparently, after the eighth century, writers were not nearly as sensitive to morphological classes for purposes of agreement as before. In the pre-Islamic poetry and in the Qur'an, there is a rather clear distinction between agreement patterns favored by B-type adjectives and S-type adjectives. After the Qur'an, this distinction appears to have been rapidly lost. In other words, post-Qur'anic CA does not preserve the same sensitivities to morphological class we find in the Qur'an—which is nearly universally claimed to be the model for CA.13

The somewhat abrupt switch from a preference for strict agreement to a preference for deflected agreement with nonhuman heads is puzzling. Again, one might suspect external interference as a cause. The change is well underway before the grammarians began codifying Classical Arabic, and, as mentioned, the grammarians do not concern themselves with regularizing or prescribing agreement. That the switch occurred shortly after the spread of Islam beyond the Arabian Peninsula suggests that another type of interference, language contact, may have figured into this rather abrupt change. 4. The many faces of language contact Language contact is one of the surest paths to change. As mentioned, language contact has been cited as the cause for the formation of the various modern Arabic dialects. Contact has not traditionally been cited as a direct cause of change in Old Arabic leading to the formation of CA. In this section, we examine ways in 13 Similarly, later imitations of Jacobean and Elizabethan English prose do not usually preserve the same sensitivities to syntax and usage that texts from the original period do.

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which the extensive language contact situation that arose due to the spread of Islam may have affected the development of CA. Substantial and prolonged language contact tends to obliterate or drastically alter the kind of delicate morpho-syntactic patterns under consideration here, For example, the contact situation in the Danelaw between Old English speakers and Old Norse speakers, if it did not directly lead to the loss of much of the Old English agreement system, accelerated the process (Baugh & Cable 1993:101-102; Görlach 1986:340). 14 Old Arabic variable patterns of agreement must have been fairly robust to have survived intact today in many vernacular varieties of Arabic (including Egyptian, Syrian, and Tunisian). With regard to Arabic, the question that is particularly puzzling is why variable agreement patterns are preserved in vernacular speech while these same patterns are nearly extinct in the more formal variety. We consider three ways in which language contact may have influenced the development of Classical and vernacular Arabic agreement: substratum factors, overgeneralization, and avoidance strategies. 4.1 Substratum influence The role of the other languages involved in this contact situation may be more complicated than the type generally posited by analysts. In the traditional approach, a feature or element found in a substratum variety is proposed as the source for a similar feature found in a 14 Some have suggested that the language contact situation in the Danelaw led to creolization (Poussa 1982); however, Kastovsky noted that ".. .such an interpretation has been met with considerable scepticism" (1992:327). Görlach observed that the often less than precise use of the terms creole/creolization has led to over-application: "Unless simplification and language mixture are thought to be sufficient criteria for the definition of a creole or creoloid (and I do not think they are, since this would make most languages of the world creoles, and the term would consequently lose its distinctiveness), then Middle English does not appear to be a creole." (Görlach 1986:335). Görlach described the simplifications apparently caused or accelerated by contact with Old Norse as levelling, noting that: Such simplification can occur in every language development, but it appears to be furthered by two conditions: 1. extensive language contacts, especially between speakers of related (or similar) languages (or dialects); 2. the absence of a norm, or of institutions capable of implementing such a norm (schools etc.) (Görlach 1986:335). Both conditions are fulfilled in the early history of Arabic for some important regions.

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variety with a language contact history. In our case, the substratum may have contributed in two important ways: First, structural properties of substratum languages may have figured in predisposing normative speakers of Arabic toward a given analysis of the variable patterns they found in formal OA—as discussed in section 4.2. 15 Second, substratum vernacular languages doubtless helped to shape the various Arabic vernacular varieties which arose (as in traditional substratum approaches). These new Arabic vernacular varieties, in turn, may have helped to shape CA due to avoidance—as discussed in section 4.3. 4.1.1 Aramaic/Syriac Aramaic is the most likely substratum language to have figured in this process. Iraq was the early intellectual center of Islam; as such it played a major role in the formation of CA. Aramaic was the most common native language in Iraq (Morony 1984:169); as a result, it was probably the most important substratum language with reference to the development of varieties of vernacular Arabic, and perhaps even CA. Aramaic was the official language employed in Iraq by the Persian inheritors of the Babylonian empire (Donner & Röllig 196264, 1:274-275). Syriac, essentially a Christian dialect of Aramaic, occupied a particularly important position with respect to Arabic as Greek works on science and philosophy largely came into Arabic via Syriac during the Golden Age of Islam. The Bible came to the Arabs, even before Islam, through Syriac. We have found no grammars of the spoken Aramaic of this time. There are some works on Syriac, such as Nöldeke (1966 [1898]). As usual, discussion of agreement is far from complete. We have found no reference to anything like deflected agreement. In order to arrive at a more precise picture of agreement in Syriac, we examined a sample of text from the Syriac Bible.16 The results are presented in Table 4. 15

We do not consider Persian in this paper, as there is no gender agreement in Persian, and number agreement is limited. We omit Coptic because Egypt played a relatively minor role in the formation of CA, as compared to Iraq. The inclusion of Persian and Coptic must await a more exhaustive treatment of the subject. 16 We chose a sample from the Gospel of Luke in order to check for possible Greek influence on the Syriac translation (the underlying text for Luke is commonly

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TABLE 4. Agreement in Syriac with nonhuman plural heads by type Adj.

Verb.

Pron.

Dem. Pron.

Total

Masc. pl. head nouns: masc. pl.: fem. pl.: common pl.: masc. sing. fem. sing. Total:

4 2 0 0 6

9 3 0 0 12

6 2 0 0 8

4 0 4 0 0 8

23 7 4 0 0 34

Fem. pl. head nouns: masc. pl.: fem. pl.: common pl.: masc. sing. fem. sing. Total:

0 7 0 0 7

1 2 1 0 4

2 1 0 0 3

0 0 2 0 0 2

3 10 2 1 0 16

From Table 4, we see that, at least for literary Syriac, plural forms occur with nonhuman plural heads, as in (5). In our corpus, there was one exception: a masculine singular verbal form occurred with a feminine plural subject (which may have been due to attraction, that is, the presence of an adjacent human plural noun may have resulted in agreement obtaining with it, rather than the actual subject). In general, Syriac masculine plural heads tend to occur with other masculine plural forms, and feminine plural heads tend to occur with feminine plural heads—though there is some variation. (5)

Syriac feminine plural agreement: mela-y haaleyn d-metmalaayn b-zabn-heyn words(f.pl.)-my these(c.pl.) REL-fulfilled(f.pl.) in-time-their (f.pl.) "...my words, which shall be fulfilled in their time..." (Luke 1:20)

acknowledged as Greek). We found no evidence of Greek influence on the Syriac patterns of agreement: the Greek gender and plural type did not appear to affect the type of Syriac agreement which obtained. We attempted to examine texts which would exemplify a variety of Arama'c closer to that spoken in sixth-eighth century Iraq. Michael Morony (p.c.) suggested that incantation bowls would be the best source for this. Unfortunately, plural nonhuman heads proved to be extremely scarce in the material we examined (a number of such plurals did occur; however, none of these functioned as a head). We have also examined additional Syriac texts from the traditional 'lives of the saints' genre with similar results.

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Claiming that the Aramaic agreement of the time was like that of Syriac is premature without further evidence. Syriac agreement, however, is of primary concern due to its role in the translation movement, as mentioned above. For this reason, we find it particularly relevant that Syriac agreement patterns appear to be straight forward, that is, there is largely strict agreement. Caution is in order as ours is an edited corpus and some editors and scribes tend to normalize texts. However, given the variety in the agreement patterns reported in Table 4—for example, masculine plural heads occurring with feminine plural agreement loci and vice versa, not to mention the verbal locus showing masculine singular agreement—one can hardly imagine that these agreement patterns have been regularized to any significant degree. Of course, without a study of unedited period materials, or critical editions of such materials, we cannot be certain that there was no deflected agreement in Syriac or other dialects of Aramaic. Nevertheless, from Nöldeke's grammar and our own investigation, we are confident that deflected agreement did not constitute a common pattern in Syriac and consequently would not have contributed directly to the regularization of OA patterns of agreement in the direction of deflected agreement. One characteristic of Syriac which may have struck a familiar chord in Aramaic speakers as they learned Arabic was the tendency of Syriac writers to use a feminine form when referring to a nonhuman referent when no head was specifically mentioned, as in (6) and (7). Although the agreement is strict in Syriac, the notion of using the feminine to refer to nonhuman referents is common to Syriac and Arabic. (6)

(7)

hdaa? ii deen dmetbapyaa? this (f.sg.) it (f.sg.) but needed (f.sg.) "But one thing is needful." haleen kul-heyn these (f.pl.) all-them (f.pl.) "All of these" (Nöldeke 1966:144)

4.1.2 Greek The language of the most important cultural force in the region for a thousand years was Greek. Before the advent of Islam, however,

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Syriac had replaced Greek as the language of education and scholarship in the East. Nevertheless, Greek continued to be taught in Hellenistic universities and even Persian centers of culture and learning. Many well-educated people of the time, some of whom no doubt became prominent members of Arab literary society, knew Greek, though they may have felt more comfortable writing in Syriac or Persian. Even after the arrival of the Arabs, Greek remained the language of administration in Damascus.17 Learners' familiarity with Greek may have contributed to the regularization of the pre-Islamic agreement variability. In Greek, verbal agreement with neuter nouns is singular (Greek shows no distinction for gender in the verb). That is, there is a parallel between Arabic and Greek in that both show singular verbal agreement with what are essentially neuter plurals, as in (8) and (9). Deflected agreement in Greek is restricted to the verbal agreement system. However, nominal neuter plural agreement inflections show many similarities to the feminine singular, being identical to it in the nominative case. (8) (9)

touto this (neut.sg.) "this is" tauta these (neut.pl.) "these are"

estin is (3rd.sg.) estin are (3rd.sg.)

Given that Greek occupied a high status position in the region and given that Arabic was hailed as God's own language, the language of the miraculous Qur'an, it is not unthinkable that nonnative speakers might draw some parallels between these two super varieties (without necessarily being conscious of doing so). Christians, who did not have as high a stake in preserving the integrity of OA, were often hired as tutors to teach Arab children to read and write Arabic. Some of these tutors may have had Greek, as well as Syriac, in their heads as the language of learning.

17 See Versteegh (1977:1-13) for a historical overview of Greek and its use prior to and after the spread of Islam.

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The pattern of deflected agreement with nonhuman plurals in Classical Arabic/MSA is strikingly similar to the traditional neuter category, particularly common in many Indo-European languages.18 Many educated people throughout the region would have been familiar with the neuter category from the formal category found in Greek. Second language learners do not approach language learning with a clean slate, as has been repeatedly illustrated by the second language acquisition research on cross-linguistic influence (Sharwood Smith & Kellerman 1986). One's prior linguistic experience influences subsequent attempts at learning a new language. In approaching the task of learning Arabic, nonnatives could not help but be influenced by their prior linguistic experience.19 Ibn Khaldoun (quoted by Hajji Khalifa, cited in Makdisi 1981:153) observed that most of the early carriers of knowledge in Islam were normative speakers of Arabic. Educated Jewish and Christian officials who had worked in the old administrations of the newly conquered lands often retained their posts, eventually switching to Arabic as the official language of the government (Vööbus 1988:300). In other words, those responsible for making OA a tool of scholarship and other prose use—-including official government use—and those who helped to impart the knowledge of it to children were generally not native speakers of the language. They were probably the ones responsible for the regularization of agreement patterns given that the change to essentially categorical agreement in O A appears to have taken place shortly after the spread of Islam. The nonnative Arabic speakers (scribes, tutors and scholars) who came to be the intellectual elite of the budding Islamic culture undoubtedly were already educated people before they learned 18 Killean (1968) pointed out the parallel between MSA deflected agreement with nonhuman plurals and neuter agreement systems. 19 In a study of second language lexical boundary acquisition, Graham & Belnap (1986) found that even after years of residence in the United States, nonnative speakers of English still retained internal mental representations (categories) which corresponded more closely to those of their native speech communities than to those of native speakers of American English. Mathiesen (1972) documents a particularly vivid example of how an individual's vernacular influences the comprehension of texts written in a liturgical language. Synodal Church Slavonic texts are interpreted in a number of ways according to the reader's or listener's linguistic background (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian or SerboCroatian).

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Arabic. With few exceptions, they would have been highly literate in another language before they became literate in Arabic. Some of these early nonnative Arabic writers would have already had a mental neuter grammatical category. In learning Arabic (in formulating mental hypotheses about the language), learners would naturally simplify a variable phenomenon in the direction of some pattern familiar to them.20 Nevertheless, such substratum influence is not crucial to our argument that nonnative users of what came to be CA contributed to the regularization of OA agreement patterns. Substratum arguments are difficult, if not impossible, to prove. However, in the case of a change in a superordinate variety which appears to have taken place after a language contact situation, it is important to consider the possibility of substratum interference. 4.2 Overgeneralization Let us now consider Tables 2 and 3 from a language contact perspective. The new agreement system found in CA—with essentially categorical deflected agreement in prose texts—appears to be the result of generalizing the already predominant pattern. Only in the domain of the adjective was plural agreement more common than deflected agreement—even in the earliest, most conservative text in the corpus. In the Qur'an, arguably the most influential model of formal OA during and after the spread of Islam, the percentage of deflected agreement across all contexts is 90% (111/124). Nonnative could easily have overgeneralized deflected agreement given its high frequency, with or without substratum factors predisposing them to such an analysis.21 20

As far as we are aware, our argument for the possibility of Greek structural influence on Arabic here is new. However, it is not without parallel. We, like Versteegh (1977), do not suggest that there was direct borrowing of categories; rather, we believe speakers were influenced by categories with which they were familiar. Versteegh maintained that the Arab grammarians did not adopt Greek grammar for a model but that elements of the Greek grammatical tradition were familiar to them and they could not help but be influenced by that background in their formulation of Arabic grammar. Our argument is similar, but even one more step removed from consciousness: learners' familiarity with Greek itself, rather than their knowledge of Greek metalinguistic concepts, may have figured in their analysis of Arabic as they learned it. 21 Tutors (Christian or Muslim) of Arab children could have contributed to the process of overgeneralizing agreement patterns. In teaching children (or adults)

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Learner overgeneralization of the grammatical patterns of the target language is widely attested. In his original formulation of the notion of interlanguage, Selinker included overgeneralization among the five processes "central to second language learning," processes which result in the formation of a learner's interlanguage (1972:214). Nonnative users of formal Arabic would not have possessed the finetuned sensitivities to morphological classes and morpho-syntactic tendencies possessed by native Arabic speakers—even though many of them developed considerable prowess in Classical Arabic.22 However, if nonnative speakers were largely responsible for the regularization of agreement patterns in OA, why would these variable patterns be preserved in vernacular usage and not in the formal register? The answer to this question may be found in psychologists' research on probability matching. 4.2.1 Acquiring probabilities: probability matching vs. plurality In order for variable patterns to survive, individuals who will pass them on (children or adult learners) must acquire these patterns and their frequency of usage from other speakers.23 Experiments indicate that both children and adults are capable of matching probabilities fairly rapidly and accurately.24 For example, if a child or adult is presented one by one a set of randomized cards with pictures of either elephants (75% of the cards) or tigers (25% of the cards) and asked to

formal Arabic, even a native speaker could easily oversimplify the facts of agreement to fit the most frequent patterns. In summarizing Payne's (1980) work on the acquisition of variable phonological rules, Labov noted that "on the one hand we have phonetic rules acquired with only a few years' exposure to peer influence; on the other hand, phonological structures which are not acquired with any great precision unless they are learned from parents" (1982:47). In other words, some variable patterns can be extremely difficult for outsiders to acquire—regardless of contact hours. 23 We are not suggesting here that people actually learn rules, only that their use of language reflects what looks like rules with associated probabilities of application. See Skousen (1989) for a discussion of how speakers replicate frequencies without actually learning rules and their frequencies of application. 24 Skousen (1989:77-86) and Labov (in progress) both discuss probability matching research and its implications for linguistics, albeit from different perspectives. Skousen cites the results of probability matching research in support of his analogical model of language; Labov discusses animal and human probability matching from an evolutionary, teleologicai perspective. 22

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guess whether each succeeding card will be an elephant or a tiger, both children and adults will soon adjust to the actual probability in their guesses. However, if a reward is offered for correctly guessing, older children and adults shift nearly all of their guesses to the most frequent outcome, thereby maximizing their gains. In short, unrewarded guessing quickly approximates the frequency of the input whereas rewarded guessing tends toward plurality, that is, choosing the most frequent option in the input. We may liken the learning of Arabic in its two extremes, informal spoken and the formal register exemplified by the Qur'an, to these two types of learning. The process of learning the formal variety shows many parallels with rewarded guessing. For example, if a learner is aware that one agreement pattern is much more common than another, she will be far more likely to choose the more frequent (and safer) pattern. The fact that the formal variety is associated with writing, a more permanent medium, further adds to the pressure of using a variant whose acceptability is unquestionable. Making mistakes in the use of a formal variety can be a serious matter; mastering it can open doors. Therefore, choosing to use the most common patterns of the formal variety is playing it safe (going for the reward). On the other hand, the use of the informal spoken variety is not such a highpressure matter. One would not feel the pressure (at least not as acutely) to maximize one's gains by choosing to select according to plurality. Therefore, probability matching is much more likely when using the vernacular. Probability matching versus selection by plurality nicely accounts for the observed facts: The relatively low-pressure situation of acquiring the informal spoken variety lead to probability matching and the preservation of variable patterns of agreement. The highpressure situation of acquiring the formal written variety lead to selection by plurality and the subsequent regularization of variable patterns of agreement. In other words, second language learners could both preserve agreement variation in the new vernacular varieties of Arabic while curtailing its use in the more formal variety.

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4.3 Avoidance Second language learners generally do not have the time or access to the target language to allow them to master it fully. 25 Overgeneralizations resulting in nonnative approximations of the target language system are common, if not the rule. Learners are quite aware of their imperfect command of a second language and employ strategies such as avoidance to compensate for their partial control of some aspects of the target language. In this manner, a nonnative may appear to have a greater command of the language than is actually the fact. For example, if a normative speaker of French is uncomfortable using the subjunctive, he will tend to develop strategies which help him to avoid using those structures he feels he does not fully control. Lavandera (1978) reports a case of habitual avoidance of contexts calling for the use of Spanish subjunctive forms by an entire bilingual speech community of Italian-Spanish speakers in Buenos Aires. Avoidance strategies can lead to overgeneralization. If a normative only uses structures she is comfortable with, even when certain environments are normally filled by other structures in the speech of natives, then the normative has overgeneralized. In the case where a nonnative uses only the most frequent alternate(s) of variable patterns, avoidance can be seen as a means of maximizing one's gains by not venturing to use forms or structures whose use one has not fully mastered. With reference to agreement, we can see how nonnatives could avoid using less common patterns they might be aware of but not comfortable with in favor of higher frequency patterns they have mastered. In such a case, the use of the more frequent form in all contexts might not constitute an error, but it would also not be native­ like behavior. 4.3.1 Diglossia, avoidance strategies, and the uniformitarian doctrine Another type of avoidance may have played a role in the simplification of Old Arabic agreement patterns. Writers are typically careful to avoid the use of colloquialisms, which might suggest 25

Of course, such a statement assumes that if they had time and exposure they could master it, natively. This may or may not be the case. Neurolinguistic and second language acquisition research is far from conclusive on this point (Spolsky 1989:8496).

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incompetence. To some degree, this is true whenever a writer attempts to use a standardized or prestige variety and wants to conform to community norms of style. Because of the exaggerated difference between the H(igh) and L(ow) varieties in a diglossic speech community, the pressure to avoid colloquialisms is probably even greater. Arab writers' avoidance of vernacular-like elements is well known. Reflexes of most vernacular lexical items are also found in preIslamic or early Islamic texts (with the exception of those items which have been borrowed from other languages since the appearance of Islam). As a result, they are generally listed in dictionaries of Classical Arabic. However, writers of MSA today typically avoid lexical items having clear vernacular parallels. That is, where writers have a choice they typically use the item exclusive to Classical Arabic, thereby marking their writing as clearly erudite. For example, both ðahaba and raaha can mean "he went"; however, with few exceptions, the former is used in writing and the latter, as raah, in speech. Labov (1975) applied the uniformitarian doctrine (originally from geology) to historical linguistic change: the past was like the present and principles of change found in the present can be assumed to underlie changes which took place in the past (and vice versa). In other words, as applied to our topic, this suggests that the tendency to avoid vernacular-like elements in formal usage has probably been around since the beginnings of the Arabic diglossia. The lahn ('barbarism') literature, which sprung up as early as the eighth century, attacking poor formal Arabic is evidence of the stigma attached to Arabic showing vernacular influence and of the concern with eradicating such usage. Hypercorrections found in Middle Arabic texts are further evidence of the stigma attached to using vernacular­ like elements in writing (Blau 1988). The strategy of avoiding the use of elements having close vernacular parallels may well have contributed to the simplification of Old Arabic agreement patterns. For example, if a writer knew that both deflected and strict agreement are found in respected Arabic texts and if the local dialect shows largely strict agreement, then that writer might be tempted to use only deflected agreement in order to avoid the appearance of vernacular interference in his writing. Of course, for this to have been the case, the writer would have had to be

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quite familiar with dialects exhibiting mostly strict agreement; a dialect such as modern Cairene where deflected agreement occurs more than 90% of the time would not have had the same effect.26 Avoidance may have also lead to the demise of other Old Arabic variable patterns, for example, the variation found in verb negation: maa followed by a verb in the perfect alternated with lam followed by a verb in the imperfect jussive. After the spread of Islam, however, we find that lam is generally used in writing; not surprisingly, maa abounds in vernacular varieties. 5. Summary and Conclusions Deflected agreement was well established before the spread of Islam. In fact, it appears it dominated in all but the adjectival locus of agreement. Given this fact, the continued spread of deflected agreement through all grammatical categories could be seen as an instance of a change already in progress merely going to completion. The large numbers of nonnative speakers and writers could have accelerated a process which was already underway, as is often the case in language contact situations. This analysis would be a perfectly legitimate solution were it not for the fact that some vernacular varieties of Arabic today preserve a good deal of this agreement variation. For the written language to be ahead of the spoken language in a historical change strikes us as rather odd. We argue that the switch in CA to essentially categorical feminine singular agreement with nonhuman heads in all grammatical environments was the result of learner overgeneralization (the simplification of variable patterns). The tendency to overgeneralize deflected agreement may have been fueled by cross-linguistic interference; however, substratum effects are not a necessary condition for such to have occurred. Arguments for substratum influence usually posit that new structures or forms in a variety are 26

We have reason to believe a linguistic situation existed which would have favored the process we have outlined. However, giving this topic the coverage it deserves must await another paper. In short, we believe rural vernacular Arabic dialects— perhaps strongly influenced by an Aramaic/Syriac substratum—showed strict (or mostly strict) agreement. The association of strict agreement with rural speakers may have served as the catalyst for writers to avoid strict, and particularly sound plural, agreement.

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the result of contact with another variety. In the case of Arabic, we find the inverse: where there was greater variety before the spread of Islam, after contact, the variation is substantially reduced. Such simplification—regardless of the substratum—is common in language contact situations (Thomason & Kaufman 1988:28-32, 131). We emphasize again that what is peculiar in the case of Arabic is the fact that the written language underwent the process of agreement simplification whereas some spoken varieties preserve much of the complex agreement variation which existed before the spread of Islam outside the Arabian Peninsula. We have cited results from experimental work in psychology on probability matching to help account for these facts. Our results indicate that not only the modern Arabic dialects but also the variety or varieties that came to be Classical Arabic were noticeably affected by the language contact situation arising after the spread of Islam. We are unaware of previous scholarship that has directly linked the standardization of CA and the process of learning formal OA as a second language.27 Generally, those calling attention to the standardization of CA have pointed to the Arab grammarians as those responsible for the regularization of OA. We suggest that the contact-induced disruption of the natural transmission of Arabic from generation to generation (due to the influx of a large number of nonnatives using the language), as well as the pressures associated with formal writing, lead to the simplification and regularization of CA well before any formal prescriptive or descriptive attempts were undertaken. Scholars have pointed out vernacular Arabic and substratum interference in Christian, Jewish and Muslim Middle Arabic texts. The difference between Middle Arabic and CA texts may be one of degree. The preponderance of nonnatives among the early Muslim intellectual elite is bound to have left its mark on the language. Even though many of these writers memorized the Qur'an and became amazingly adept at 27

Robertson came rather close when she noted that "the first formal treatises and grammars of Arabic were the work of foreigners—Persians, all having learned the language as a second tongue without the benefit of that experience which gives an intuitive sense for right and wrong possessed by any native speaker, and all therefore keenly aware of the need for some logic and rational guidance in their mastery of it" (1970:65-66).

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nuances of Arabic, they, nevertheless, brought with them a linguistic experience different from that of native Arabs from the Peninsula.28 In all likelihood, perhaps in spite of their best efforts, these nonnative speakers of Arabic unknowingly reinterpreted or reanalyzed Arabic structures in light of their own linguistic experience. A critical mass of nonnative speakers could easily have influenced the development of CA as it came to be used in new contexts. On the basis of empirical evidence and well-established principles of second language acquisition, we have argued that, to some degree, CA was structurally altered due to language contact. Clearly, establishing the exact path of these developments is unlikely, and certainly beyond the scope of this paper. 29 Cross-linguistic interference, overgeneralization, and avoidance may all have figured in influencing the development of CA agreement. Our findings suggest we would all do well to re-examine our perspective on the parabiyya; perhaps it has not been as unaffected by its language contact history as one might have supposed.

REFERENCES Baugh, Alben C. & Thomas Cable. 1993. A History of the English Language (4th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Beeston, Alfred F.L. 1975. "Some Features of Modern Standard Arabic". Journal of Semitic Studies 20:62-68. Belnap, R. Kirk. 1991. Grammatical Agreement Variation in Cairene Arabic. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. & Osama Shabaneh. 1992. "Variable Agreement and Nonhuman Plurals in Classical and Modern Standard Arabic". Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics IV ed.

28

0 f course, we are not suggesting that the agreement preferences of all native speakers of Arabic from the Peninsula were the same. The same principles we have discussed for nonnative speakers could apply to even peninsular Arabs whose dialects differed considerably from the language of the Qur'an. However, probably few of these Arabs—or others—were scribes or scholars in the early days of Islam. 29 A detailed study of agreement patterns in early autographed manuscripts and other unedited texts would greatly aid in filling in some of the blanks in our corpus. The need for critical editions of texts is obvious in order to conduct fine-grained linguistic analyses.

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by Ellen Broselow, Mushira Eid & John McCarthy, 245-262. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Blau, Joshua. 1963. "The Role of the Bedouins as Arbiters in Linguistic Questions and the Mas'ala Az-Zunburiyya". Journal of Semitic Studies 8.42-51. . 1966-67. A grammar of Christian Arabic, Based Mainly on South-Palestinian Texts from the First Millennium, 3 vols. (=Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Subsidia 27-29). Louvain: Imprimerie Orientaliste. . 1988. Studies in Middle Arabic and its Judaeo-Arabic Variety. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press. Corriente, Frederico. 1976. "From Old Arabic to Classical Arabic through the PreIslamic Koine: Some Notes on the Native Grammarians' Sources, Attitudes and Goals". Journal of Semitic Studies 21.62-98. Cowell, Mark W. 1964. A Reference Grammar of Syrian Arabic, based on the dialect of Damascus. (=Arabic series, 4.) Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Institute of Languages and Linguistics. Donner, Herbert & Wolfgang Röllig. 1962-64. Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Ferguson, Charles A. 1959. "The Arabic Koiné". Language. 35.616-630. . 1989. "Grammatical Agreement in Classical Arabic and the Modern Dialects: A Response to Versteegh's Pidginization Hypothesis". Al-cArabiyya 22.5-17. Fischer, Wolfdietrich. 1971-2. "Die Perioden des klassischen Arabisch". AbrNahrain, 12.15-18. & Otto Jastrow. 1980. Handbuch der Arabischen Dialekte. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Görlach, Manfred. 1986. "Middle English—a Creole?" Linguistics across Historical and Geographical Boundaries, vol. I ed. by Dieter Kastovsky & Aleksander Szwedek, 327-344. Berlin, New York & Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Graham, C. Ray & R. Kirk Belnap. 1986. The Acquisition of Lexical Boundaries in English by Native Speakers of Spanish. International Review of Applied Linguistics 24.275-86. Guy, Gregory R. (ms.) "Saliency and the Direction of Syntactic Change". York University, Toronto, Ontario. Killean, Carolyn G. 1968. "Interesting Features of Gender-Number Concord in Modern Literary Arabic". Papers from the Fourth Regional Meeting Chicago Linguistic Society ed. by Bill J. Darden, Charles-James N. Bailey & Alice Davison, 40-49. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1992. "Semantics and Vocabulary". The Cambridge History of the English Language, vol. I ed. by Richard M. Hogg, 290-408. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Labov, William. 1975. The use of the present to explain the past. Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Linguists ed. by L. Heilmann, 825-851. Bologna: Il Molino. . 1982. "Building on Empirical Foundations". Perspectives on Historical Linguistics ed. by Winfred P. Lehmann & Yakov Malkiel, 17-92. (=Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 24). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. . (In progress). "The Maintenance of Meaning". University of Pennsylvania. Lavandera, Beatriz R. 1978. "The Variable Component in Bilingual Performance". Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1978 ed. by James E. Alatis, 391-409. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

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Makdisi, George. 1981. The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mathiesen, Robert Christian. 1972. The Inflectional Morphology of the Synodal Church Slavonic Verb. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York. Miller, Ann M. 1986. "The Origin of the Modern Arabic Sedentary Dialects: An Evaluation of Several Theories". Al-cArabiyya 19.47-74. Morony, Michael G. 1984. Iraq after the Muslim Conquest. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Nöldeke, Theodor. 1966 [1898]. Kurzgefasste syrische Grammatik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Payne, Arvilla. 1980. "Factors Controlling the Acquisition of the Philadelphia Dialect by Out-of-State Children". Locating Language in Time, Space and Society ed. by William Labov, 143-178. (=Quantitative Analyses of Linguistic Structure, 1). New York: Academic Press. Poussa, Patricia. 1982. "The Evolution of Early Standard English: The creolization hypothesis". Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 14.69-85 Robertson, Alice M. 1970. Classical Arabic and Colloquial Cairene: An historical linguistic analysis. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. Saad, George N. 1975. "Instances of Morphological and Syntactic Change in Arabic". Al-cArabiyya 8.69-78. Selinker, Larry. 1972. "Interlanguage". International Review of Applied Linguistics 10.209-31. Sharwood Smith, Michael & Eric Kellerman. 1986. Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition. New York: Pergamon. Skousen, Royal. 1989. Analogical Modeling of Language. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Spolsky, Bernard. 1989. Conditions for Second Language Learning. Oxford, New York & Toronto: Oxford University Press. Thomason, Sarah G. & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Versteegh, Cornells H. M. 1977. Greek Elements in Arabic Linguistic Thinking. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Vööbus, Arthur. 1988. History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient. (=Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalum, 500). Louvain: E. Peeters.

ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARABIC SUBJUNCTIVE

David Testen University of Chicago

The present stem system of the Literary Arabic verb has three sets of morphologically distinct formations which are classified as 'modal' and are known as indicative, jussive, and subjunctive. We may characterize these formations in the following formal terms, if we distinguish between the following parts of the person-number-gender paradigm: (a) those elements of the paradigm which are marked by the ending 0 (i.e., singular forms (other than 2nd fem.) and the first person plural); (b) those elements of the paradigm with a long vocalic extension at the end of the stem: the feminine second person singular ending -il-, the dual marker -aa-1 and the plural marker -uu- (for the masc. second and third persons); (c) those elements of the paradigm with the stem extension -na (for the fem. second and third persons). For the paradigm elements of the first type (a), the indicative mood is characterized by the presence of a suffix -u, the jussive mood by a zero, and the subjunctive mood by -a; for the second type of paradigm elements (b), the indicative is marked by -na/-ni (following high and low vowels, respectively), while the two remaining moods have zero; for the third type (c) there is no overt marking in any of the moods (cf. Table 1).

1For the second and third persons; there is no first person dual.

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Table 1. The Modal Endings of Literary Arabic (The sample verb is fapal-a "do".) Indic. Juss. Subj.

a) 3rd pers. sg. yafpal-Ø-u yafpal-Ø-0 yafpal-Ø-a

b) 3rd pers. du. yafpal-aa-ni yafpal-aa-Ø yafpal-aa-Ø

b) 3rd masc. pl. c) 3rd fem. pl. yafpal-uu-na yafpal-na-Ø yafpal-na-Ø yafpal-uu-Ø yafpal-na-Ø yafpal-uu-Ø

Wright (1979), noting that the subjunctive form is restricted to subordinate clauses, characterizes its use as indicating "... an act which is dependent upon that mentioned in the previous clause, and future to it in point of time... and hence mostly corresponds to the Latin subjunctive after MÍ..." (II:24-25). He lists the following particles as introducing the subordinate clause in question (II:25-35). (a) Pan "that", and particle-compounds containing Pan such as Pan laa/Pallaa "that... not..." and lan (< *laa Pan "(it is) not that..."), the marker of negation in the future. The conjunction Pan is used with a following subjunctive "after verbs which express inclination or disinclination, order or prohibition, duty, effect, effort fear, necessity, permission, etc." (Wright 1979, II:25)—cf. Paradtu wa-Pahbabtu Pan Pubayyina lahum tariiqa l-tapallumi "I wished and desired to make plain to them the path of learning", maa manapaka pallaa tasjuda "what hindereth thee from worshipping (him)?" In the absence of a sense of "wish, effect, expectation, or the like" in the upper clause, Pan will govern the perfect or the present indicative: papjabanii Pan qumta "it pleased me that thou stoodest up", paplamu pan yanaamu "I know that he is asleep". (b) li- "in order that" (regarded as resulting by ellipsis from li-pan "for that", which is also attested), and kay, likay "idem", as well as kaylaa, likaylaa, and lipallaa "in order that... not..."—cf. tub li-yaγfira laka llaahu "repent, so that God may forgive thee", tapallamuu likay tupallimuu "learn that ye may teach", Pinnamaa qaala ðaalika UPallaa yustaxajfa bi-l-pilmi "he said this only in order that learning might not be disparaged". (c) hattaa "until, in order that..." "when it expresses the intention of the agent and the object of the act, or the result of the act, as taking place not without the will of the agent or, at least, according to his expectation" (Wright 1979,II:29)—cf. lan nabraha palayhi paakifiina hattaa yarjifa Pilaynaa muusaa "we will not cease to stand by it..., til

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Moses return to us". The particle hattaa is followed by the perfect or the indicative, however, when the lower clause merely indicates "a simple temporal limit, or the mere effect or result of an act, without any implied design or expectation on the part of the agent"—yapbudu llaaha hattaa yaptiihi l-mawtu "he serves God until death comes to him". (d) The conjunction fa- (faaP al-sabab, the "faap-of the reason") after a clause containing an imperative, a wish, a question, or a negation—iγfir Hi yaa rabbi fa-padxula l-jannata "pardon me, O my Lord, so that I may enter Paradise", layta lii maalan fa-Patasaddaqa minhu "would that I had money, that I might give away part of it in alms!" (e) The conjunction wa- (waaw al-maliyya the "waaw of simultaneousness") when the conjoined clause indicates "an act subordinate to, but simultaneous with, the act expressed by the previous clause" (Wright 1979, 11:32)—laa tanha pan xuluqin wa-taPtiya miθlahu "do not restrain (others) from any habit, whilst you yourself practice one like it". (f) Paw "unless that, until that"—laa tabki paynuka pinnamaa nuhaawilu mulkan Paw namuuta fa-nupðaraa "let not thy eye weep, we seek nothing short of a kingdom, unless we die and (= faap al-sabab) so are excused (for not attaining it)". (g) piðan "in that case, well then" when the clause in question expresses "the result or effect of a previous statement, provided that the verb in the subordinate clause refers to a really future time, and that it is in immediate juxtaposition to PiSan.." (Wright 1979, 11:33). The response to panaa Paatiika γadan "I will come to thee tomorrow" may thus be Pidan Pukrimaka "well then, I will treat thee with respect", or PiSan laa Puhiinaka "well then, I will not insult thee". The present investigation is concerned with the history of the Arabic subjunctive, and most particularly with the issue of whether or not this mood is to be reconstructed for Proto-Semitic. As a welldocumented and well understood language which in many important respects displays remarkable linguistic conservatism, Arabic has long enjoyed a justifiably privileged position in discussion of the nature of Proto-Semitic grammar. It is therefore not surprising that, despite the earlier agnosticism of Brockelmann—

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"since... the individual languages differ strongly from on another in the means for expressing these modalities, no firm system may be set up for Proto-Semitic, although it is probable that it distinguished these forms through vocalic endings and through the expansion of the endings already serving to distinguish person." (1908,1:554)

—the tripartite modal system of Arabic is now commonly assumed to represent the original system (for the early stages of West Semitic, at least—cf. Moscati et al. 1964:134-135). It is abundantly clear, however, that we cannot blithely equate any part of the grammar of classical Arabic with that of Proto-Semitic unless that equation is supported by data from the remaining Semitic languages. It is the purpose of the following pages to suggest that the Arabic subjunctive ending -a is a significant case in point, in which the model provided by Arabic has come to take on a Proto-Semitic life of its own which may well not be justified by comparative Semitic material. It has been claimed that cognates to the Arabic subjunctive ending in -a are to be found in three sets of data from the Northwest Semitic languages, (a) Biblical Hebrew cohortatives with a final -â, (b) various Ugaritic verbal formations which appear to have had an ending -a, although the consonantal script used by Ugaritic is ambiguous and open to alternate interpretations, and (c) an ending -a found in Akkadian tablets which were written at Byblos and found at Tell el-Amarna, whose language shows a number of grammatical eccentricities (from the point of view of the more familiar forms of Akkadian) which are ascribed to the influence of an indigenous Northwest Semitic language of the fourteenth century B.C. The Biblical Hebrew forms which have been interpreted as comparable to the Arabic subjunctive are primarily first-person forms.2 The presence of the ending -â on these verbs is typically correlated with a meaning which Bauer and Leander characterize as denoting an intention or desire to carry out an action—e.g., pepberâ "may I go across!" (Dt 2:27) vs. indicative (i.e., suffixless) Pepbor—or an urging

2 As instances of what they call the 'Affekt-Aorist" in the third person Bauer & Leander (1965: 301) cite wat-taSgoM "and she lusted after" (Ez 23: 16, Qr) and yahîsâ "let him hasten" (Is 5: 19).

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for others to cooperate in an action—e.g., "let us break!" (Ps 2:3) vs. indicative (Bauer & Leander 1965:274). In addition, verbs marked with this ending are to be found in dependent clauses indicating purpose or result (Waltke & O'Connor 1990:574-576): (Arnos 8:5) (Gen. 27:4)

(Jer. 9:1)

When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain? And bring it to me so that I may eat. Oh that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, then I would leave my people. Come, leť s go to the seer.

(1 Sam. 9:9) There are, however, instances of the use of the Biblical Hebrew

forms in -a in non-modal situations. The significance of the presence of the ending is not clear in such cases. Waltke & O'Connor (1990:576577) cite the following among the examples of this formation: He turned the sea into dry land... there we rejoiced in him. How long will I see the battle standard and hear the sound of the trumpet? Like the blind we grope along the wall, we grope like those without eyes.

While parallels to the use of the Arabic subjunctive are present in the Hebrew data, the discrepancies are no less striking. The most obvious feature of the Arabic subjunctive, its all-but-absolute restriction to syntactically subordinate clauses, is absent from Hebrew verbs marked with -â; when a clause containing a verb marked with -â is associated with another clause, the relation will be one of conjoining (with "and") rather than subordination. A Hebrew verb such as "let's go!" can thus only be compared to Arabic naShaba in terms of its morphology; as far as function is concerned, the Arabic counterpart to is the jussive (li-)naShab rather than the subjunctive.

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It appears that the clearest indication of the existence of an Arabiclike modal system in a Semitic language other than Arabic is to be found in Ugaritic. Although the bulk of the texts in Ugaritic were written in an alphabetic script which marks only consonants, the Ugaritic orthographic system employs three distinct symbols to render the Ugaritic correspondent to the Semitic glottal stop (= Arabic hamza, Hebrew aleph, etc.). These three symbols have long been known to reflect in some way the quality of the vocalism adjacent to the aleph, although the details of the proper interpretation of the vocalic data provided by these three alephs remain a matter of considerable debate. The ongoing discussion of the issue of reading Ugaritic alephs notwithstanding, it appears very likely that Ugaritic distinguished between verbal forms ending in -u and those ending in - 0 ; the existence of a third modal ending in -a is accepted by many scholars, but not by all (see the discussion in Verreet 1988:8-10). To the extent that the limited information provided by verbal stems ending in aleph allows one to say, it seems likely that the behavior of Ugaritic -a was closer to the Hebrew cohortative than to the Arabic subjunctive. Verreeťs recent discussion of the moods of Ugaritic characterizes the forms in -a as "... a gentler, even fundamentally more subjective volitive, whose source is the free spirit and will of the subject, whereas the jussive shows the value of a command, which more categorical and objective..." (Verreet 1988:126). i*qra (to be read [mm] (1.23,1) yt*lk w ysd / yh pat mlbr / wn aklm / w ymta (to be read (1.12:I: 37)

"Let me call upon the kind gods." "Ba'al goes about on the hunt, he travels to the edges of the steppe, so that he comes upon the eaters and finds the tearers" (Verreet 1988:164); "... and lo, (it happened that) he came upon the eaters and found the tearers" (Tropper 1990:338)

Once again, as in the case of Hebrew, note that the Ugaritic a-form has no restriction against occurring in the main clause, in marked contrast to the Arabic subjunctive.

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Moran (1960) presents evidence supporting the existence of a verbal suffix -a in the Canaanite dialect spoken in Byblos in the latter half of the second millennium B.C. Although written in Akkadian, the tablets found at Tell el-Amarna contain a number of non-Akkadian features which appear to represent the native Northwest Semitic languages of the local scribes. The sixty-six tablets from Byblos which form the corpus for Moran's study give a rather clear picture of a systematic opposition between verbal forms ending in -u (cf. the Arabic indicative) and those ending in -a (cf. the Arabic subjunctive). Moran has identified a clear tendency for forms ending in -a to be correlated with requests or desires. Cf. the following instances of the verb nadaanu "give" (1960:3, 8): Table 2. Passages from the Tell el-Amarna Tablets Exemplifying Moran's 'Modal Congruence' Suffix -u ša-ni-tam mi-nu-um ia-di-nu mi-imma ù ba-la-tám LUGAL a-na LU.ME2 ha-za-nu-ti ib-ri-ia ù a-na ia-si la-a-mi ia-di-nu mi-im-ma (EA 126:14-18) "Moreover, why does the king give whatever is necessary for sustenance to the governors, my associates, but to me he gives nothing?" pa-an-nu LÚ.ME2 ma-sa-ar-ti LUGAL-ri it-ti-ia ù LUGAL-ru iadi-nu še-imhi-a iš-tu KUR ia-rimu-ta (EA 125:14-17) "Previously a royal garrison was with me and the king used to give grain from Yarimuta"

Suffix -a li-eš-mi LUGAL-ru a-wa-te ARAD-šu ù ia-di-na ba-la-tá ARAD-šu... (EA 74:53-56)' "May the king heed his servant's words and grant his servant's means of sustenance..."

yi-eš-mi LUGAL-ru a-wa-te ARAD-šu [i]a-di-na LÚ.ME2 a-na na-sa-ar [UR]U-šu... (EA 85:75-77) "May the king heed his servant's words, may he give men to guard his city..."

The distribution of the endings -u and -a in purpose clauses in the Byblos tablets follows a clear pattern, which Moran calls modal congruence: "... if the verb of the first clause states a fact (perfect, indicative), then in the purpose clause the verb is in the indicative; if the verb of the first clause is an imperative, a jussive or yaqtula

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expressing a wish, etc., then in the purpose clause the verb is a jussive—or yaqtula" (Moran 1960:9). This pattern is significant for Moran's discussion of the historical morphology of the forms in question. Since the indicative ending -u is entirely without parallel in normal Akkadian,3 we must assume that it represents a Canaanitism, and since the distribution of -u is so closely linked with that of the ending -a, it follows that we must likewise take this same early Canaanite language to be the source of the -a. This is important because it allows Moran to counter the potential argument that the ending -a is actually the familiar Akkadian ventive suffix -a(m). Spellings of Moran's subjunctive-like ending with a final -m are indeed to be found in the Byblos corpus (e.g., yi-sa-am, which Moran reads as "may (the king my lord) come forth", yu-da-nam "may it be given"), but Moran discounts the final nasal in these forms, arguing that "... they are really not ventives, but ventives which have been equated with a formally identical morpheme is a completely different speech pattern. And this speech can only be the scribes' native Canaanite" (1960:2). We have available an alternative approach to interpreting Moran's modal forms which allows us to take the forms in -m at face value, however. Even if we take this ending to be a reflection of the language of the West Semitic scribes rather than of Akkadian, the suffix -a(m) may be interpreted as a Cannanite cognate to the Akkadian ventive. On formal grounds at least, the Akkadian ventive suffixes (iprus-am, iprusuu-nim) may plausibly be regarded as related to the so-called energie suffixes found scattered throughout the West Semitic languages (e.g., classical Arabic yaßal-an, yafpal-anna) (cf. Testen 1993). It is not beyond possibility that the suffix which Moran has identified as a modal marker is another instance of the continuation of the West Semitic counterpart to the Akkadian ventive suffixes. If we read Moran's modal ending as -a(m) rather than -a, we find an obvious parallel to the early Canaanite suffix in the verbal suffixes written -n in Epigraphic South Arabian inscriptions. Just as Moran has pointed out the congruencies between the functions of the Byblian -a(m) suffix and the Arabic subjunctive, Höfner has drawn attention to 3

In this function, at least. The Akkadian 'subjunctive' -u, while it superficially matches the Byblian -u in formal terms, plays an entirely different role in the grammar.

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the fact that the Epigraphic South Arabian counterpart to the Arabic subjunctive is to be found in verbs marked with the n-suffixes. In purpose-clauses stand predominantly n-imperfects; the verb is preceded by /, less frequently lðt, kl, klkðj l, in a negative purpose-clause the imperfect is introduced by bn ðt. In Arabic in the purpose-clause stands li with a following subjunctive. Here would therefore be a case in which in [Old South Arabian] the n-imperfect functions as the replacement form for the subjunctive. Gl 6213 ljtbn "so that he return" Gl 1548/49,1. 5 ljknnn (li-jakuunuunaan) "so that they be" Gl 10644 kljknn Hal 360-362,1. III klkðjljknn"so that he be" SE 458 wlðtjsnmn "and so that he bring forth" (Höfner 1943:76)

We have argued elsewhere that the Epigraphic South Arabian energie endings in -n and -nn are the normal phonological cognates to the Akkadian ventive endings -am, -nim, each having developed regularly from a Proto-Semitic verbal suffix *-am/-nim (*-an-/-nin~) (Testen 1993). This interpretation of Byblian -a(m) and Epigraphic South Arabian -n(n) casts a different light on the other Northwest Semitic endings which have been traced back to a Proto-Semitic subjunctive *-a. The Hebrew forms in -â, it appears, could come as easily from *-am as from *-a, as could the posited Ugaritic verbs in -a. We may, therefore, say that all of the forms which have been discussed above, aside from the Arabic ones, either (a) point directly toward a Proto-Semitic form ending in a nasal, as in the case of Epigraphic South Arabian and Byblian, or (b) are ambiguous in the sense that they could potentially have come from a proto-form either with a final nasal or without a final nasal, as in the case of Hebrew and Ugaritic. The Literary Arabic form in -a becomes, rather than the model for comparative Semitic, a comparative Semitic isolate: no language other than Arabic presents clear evidence in support of a modal ending in *-a rather than *-am.

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Table 3. Apparent Sources for Subjunctive-like Endings in West Semitic (on phonological grounds) Byblian -a(m) ESA-n Hebrew -â Ugaritic -a Arabic -a

< Proto-Semitic *-am < Proto-Semitic *-am or *-a [< Proto-Semitic *-a]

How is the -a of the Arabic subjunctive to be reconciled with early Canaanite -a(m) and Epigraphic South Arabian -n? If we start from the assumption that they have all come from a common source, we must explain either (a) how an original suffix -a should have spontaneously developed a final nasal in Byblian and Epigraphic South Arabian, or (b) why Arabic should have lost its final *-n. Of these two options, the latter holds the greater intrinsic appeal: the innovation which we must assume (i.e., the loss of *-n) is limited to a single language, and the resulting reconstructed proto-form of the suffix, *-am, is identical to a suffix which we are obliged to reconstruct in any event on other grounds, i.e., the ventive-energic suffix *-am/-nim. Could the Arabic subjunctive in fact be a development of the energic? Much about the exact value of the energic endings, both in Arabic and elsewhere in the Semitic languages, remains open to question. One characteristic that is particularly evident about the Arabic energie suffixes, however, is that their appearance is invariably associated with the future tense. A form yafpaa-anna, unlike the corresponding indicative yafpal-u, is thus excluded from a present tense reading. It is therefore worth noting that Arabic subordinate clauses containing a verb marked with the subjunctive are as a rule associated with a notion of futurity—i.e., they refer to an event occurring (or, to be more precise, construed as occurring) subsequent to the event indicated in the main clause. Subordinate clauses employing the indicative or perfect rather than the subjunctive have no such restriction as to their temporal relation to the main clause (Wright 1979,II:25-26). yuriidu zaydun Pan yanaama

"Zayd wants to sleep", i.e., "Zayd wishes that he will sleep (subj.)."

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARABIC SUBJUNCTIVE yaplamu zaydun Pan yanaamu/ ?anna-hu yanaamu4

161

"Zay knows that he is sleeping (indic.)."

A subordinate clause marked as referring to the future might quite easily come to be interpreted as incorporating some notion comparable to modality, assuming that the main clause provides a suitable context for such an interpretation. When the main clause involves the statement of an intention or purpose, it would thus be rather natural to find that an event situated subsequent in time to the main-clause event is construed as a consequence, and the marker of futurity is taken to be an indicator of the consequential relation between the clauses. The development would amount to a reanalysis of temporal subsequence as logical consequence. Such a reinterpretation would be all the more likely to occur if the future-marker in question were slipping into abeyance elsewhere in the language, as has in fact happened with the energic. By the time of the earliest documentation of Arabic, the energic suffixes -an and -anna seem to have served as little more than stylistic alternants, principally associated with oath formulae. With the appearance of newer means of marking the future—i.e., the verbal prefix sa- and the particle sawfa— the energie endings were thrust further and further into the background of the Arabic grammatical system. If prior to their total fall into disuse, however, there had been a reinterpretation of the energie in certain contexts as a specialized marker of consequence, as we have conjectured, the drastic curtailment of the grammatical viability of the energie suffix elsewhere in the language would have left the surviving traces of the suffix, ensconced within a clearly delineated type of syntactic structure, isolated and all the more subject to further, more specific developments. It is in this light that we should examine the question of the formal side of the subjunctive suffix. If we posit that the energic suffix is the ultimate source of Arabic -a, we must reach an understanding of how such an ending could have arisen from *-an, given what we know of the phonological history of the energic endings. We have conjectured elsewhere (Testen 1993) that the two types of energie suffixes found in Arabic (lightened -an and heavy -anna) are to be traced back to the 4

In the case of Pan yanaamu, the conjunction an is regarded by the grammarians as the lightened' (muxaffafa) counterpart to Panna (cf. Fischer 1978).

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Proto-Semitic suffixes *-am and *-nnim, respectively (cf. the Akkadian ventive ending(s) of singular iprus-am and plural iprusuu-nim and the Sabaean ending(s) -n vs. -nn). Let us compare the paradigm of the lightened energic suffix to that of the subjunctive (Table 4). Table 4: Lightened Energic and Subjunctive Suffixes of Arabic5 l Sg. 2MSg. 2FSg. 3MSg. 3FSg. 1P1. 2 MPI. 2 FPL 3 MPI. 3 FPL

Lightened energie ?afpal-an tafpal-an tafpali-n yafpal-an tafp al-an nafpal-an tafpalu-n * yaffpalu-n *

Subiunctive ?afïal-a tafpal-a tafpalii-0 yafpl-a tafpal-a nafpal-a tafpaluu-0 tafpalna-0 yafpaluu-0 yafpalna-0

The subjunctive forms may be related to the energie forms by a simple rule: the subjunctive consists of the energie forms without the final -n. Since several the elements in the paradigm contain an underlying long vowel, the disappearance of the -n and the resulting opening of the final syllable allows the length, which is lost in the closed syllable, to emerge (e.g., subjunctive yafîaluu vs. energie yafialun < *yaf(îaluuri). Although the phonological history of Arabic does not feature the general loss of a word-final nasal, it is clear that there were specific environments in which such a loss did in fact occur. This is most apparent in the pausal form of words ending in (underlying) -an. In pausal position the final -n is dropped and the vowel a lengthened; final -un and -in, in contrast, are simply lost in pausal position (Wright 1979, 111:368-369). This change is well documented for the accusative singular indefinite ending, and is responsible for the use of alif in 5

The second and third feminine plural have lost the 'lightened' shape of the energie ending and only show the heavy forms taßalnaanni, yaßalnaanni (probably < earlier *-naa-nim). We must assume either that the Arabic subjunctive in -na is to be traced back to a lost lightened form *-nan < *-naa-m, or that it has been restructured on the basis of the -na of the indicative and the jussive.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARABIC SUBJUNCTIVE

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conventional Arabic orthography's rendering of the accusative ending -an. Table 5: Arabic Pausal Forms of Case Endings Contextual form malik-un "a king (nom.)" malik-an "a king (acc.)" malik-in "a king (gen.)"

Pausal form malik malikaa malik

Conventional spelling (superscript = diacritics) MaLiKun Ma LiKAan MaLikin

An energic in pausal position undergoes the same shift of -an > -aa.6 If energie verbs were used at one point to mark consequential clauses, it would therefore have been natural to find -aa as the ending of a good number of verbs in such clauses—*yuriidu zaydun Pan yanaaman "Zayd wishes that he will sleep (energ.)"→*yuriidu zaydun Pan yanaamaa. However, since -aa is the expected pausal form for a final -a as well as for -an, *Pan yanaamaa could easily have been misinterpreted as the pausal correspondent to a contextual form *yanaama. Once the decay of the energie removed -an from the core of the grammatical system, Arabic could easily have made such a reinterpretation and created a new underlying form in -a, agreeing in both form and function with what we find for the modern subjunctive. The loss of final -n seems to have occurred in contextual forms in certain environments as well. Wright (1979,II:379-380) describes the loss of final nuun as one of the poetic licenses allowable—e.g., idriba panka l-humuuma "drive sad thoughts from thee", for energie *idriban—the truncated forms yaku, taku, etc., corresponding to the jussive mood of kaana (norm. yakun, takun...) being particularly well known instances of this truncation. He also cites cases of the dropping of tanwiin in poetry (II:388); a good number of the examples which he gives, it may be noted, have a following hamzat al-wasl (i.e., are followed by a consonant cluster at the onset of the following word), an environment which gives the impression of systematically favoring the loss of -n.

6

As Brockelmann has observed; cf. his comments on Sura 50: 24 Palqiyaa fii jahannama kulla kaffaarin îaniidin (1908 I: 554).

164

DAVID TESTEN pamru llaðii hašama l-θariida lipAmr, who broke up bread to qawmihi (for *pamrun...) make soup for his people pamru l-pulaa hašama... (var. of The noble pAmr broke up... above) (for *pamrun...) fapalfaytuhu γayra mustaptibin And I found him not seeking (the wa-laa ðaakiri llaaha pillaa Lord's favour), and seldom qaliilan (for *ðaakirin) thinking upon God wa-hayyu muhaaribi l-?abtaalu And the tribe of Mohaarib, heroes qidman (for *muhaaribin...) of old

Outside of poetry, the tanwiin is also dropped routinely in personal names before the bn- of the patronymic (Wright 1979,I:249-250)—i.e., muhammadu bnu japfari bni xaalidi bni muhammadin, rather than *muhammadun(i) bnu japfarin(i) bni xaalidin(i) bni muhammadin. If an energie verbal form were to be used in an early Arabic subordinate clause, as we have been conjecturing, there would thus have been no shortage of environments in which the -n could have been lost by regular phonological developments. In addition to utterancefinal (pausal) position, the dropping of -n, it appears, could be expected before any consonant cluster—for example, before the cluster produced by a following definite article (e.g., *yuriidu zaydun Pan yadriba(n) ldayfa "Zayd wants to beat the guest", *yuriidu zaydun Pan yanaama(n) l-dayfu "Zayd wants the guest to sleep"). In sum, even though we cannot say that Arabic loses final -n generally, there are a considerable number of phonological conditions in which this loss is observed. If we add to this the observation that a final -n routinely assimilates to a following liquid (r, /, m, w, y) in early Arabic, we see that there would have been quite a large set of circumstances in which the -n marking an energie suffix would not have been visible. In light of this, and in light of the gradual disappearance of the energie suffix elsewhere in the grammar, it seems quite possible that a new suffix associated specifically with subordinate purpose-clauses could have arisen. A parallel to the syntactic dimension of the developmental process which we have been positing for Arabic is to be found in Slavic. A number of the Slavic languages show a perfective present used in the role of a future tense—cf. Russian napiset, Polish napisze "he will write (perfective)". In Serbo-Croatian, however, this construction has been replaced by a new periphrastic future consisting of the infinitive

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARABIC SUBJUNCTIVE

165

and a truncated form of the verb ht(ij)eti "to want"—napisa- 'ce "he will write" (< inf. napisa(ti) + (ho)'ce "he will want to write"). The perfective present, the earlier future formation, is now restricted to use in subordinate clauses much as the Arabic subjunctive is. Table 6: Proposed Development of Arabic Compared to the Development of SerboCroatian (SC) Main Clause: "He will write the book" Pre-SC SC Pre-Arabic Lit. Arabic

*napiše knjigu. napi sa-'ce knjigu *yaktuban 1-kitaaba (sa-/sawfa) yaktubu 1-kitaaba

Subordinate Clause: "It is necessary that he (*will) write the book" *treba da napiše knjigu treba da napiše knjigu *yajibu Pan yaktuban 1-kitaaba yajibu Pan yaktuba 1-kitaaba

In a sense, we may conjecture that this is the exact opposite of what occurred in the history of North West Semitic. There it seems to have been the main clause manifestations of the energie which became isolated and ultimately grammaticalized. The result of this grammaticalization was the appearance of what has come to be called the cohortative, a verbal marker indicating intent (cf. Hebrew nelokâ "let's go!" and Ugaritic iqra (PiqraPa) "let me call"). Its earlier function as a marker of temporal or logical subsequence is evidently still to be in Moran's pattern of modal congruence found in the Byblos tablets. The Arabic modal system should thus not be assumed as the starting point for Semitic, but merits historical investigation as the final product of its own unique evolution. It appears that the suffix which has been the object of this investigation, the subjunctive, has undergone a number of fundamental changes over the course of its historical development—from, it may be conjectured, an aspect marker (Testen 1993) to a tense marker to a marker of résultativity, and ultimately to what it is now in Modern Standard Arabic, arguably a semantically vacuous reflection of the morphology of verbs in a specific type of subordinate clause (Fischer 1978; Kropfitsch 1981).

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REFERENCES Bauer, Hans & Pontus Leander. 1965. Historische Grammatik der hebräischen Sprache des alten Testaments, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung. Brockelmann, Carl. 1908. Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen. Berlin: Verlag von Reuther & Reichard. Dietrich, M, O. Lorentz & J. Sanmartin. 1976. Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugaritic (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 24). Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag and Kevelaer: Verlag Butzon & Bercker. Fischer, W. 1978. "'Dass'-Sätze mit Pan und Panna" Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik 1:24-31. Höfner, Maria. 1943. Altsüdarabische Grammatik. Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz. Kropfitsch, Lorenz. 1981. "Arabischer und deutscher 'Konjunktiv'—Ein funktionsanalytischer Vergleich." Al-Hudhud: Festschrift Maria Höfner zum 80. Geburtstag ed. by Roswitha G. Stiegner, 143-159. Graz: Karl-FranzensUniversität. Moran, W. L. 1960. "Early Canaanite yaqtula" Orientalia 29:1-19. Moscati, Sabatino, Anton Spitaler, Edward Ullendorf & Wolfram von Soden. 1964. An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages: Phonology and Morphology. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Rabin, Chaim. 1951. Ancient West-Arabian. London: Taylor's Foreign Press. Testen, David. 1993. "On the Development of the Energic Suffixes." Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics V ed. by Mushira Eid & Clive Holes, 293-311. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tropper, Josef. 1990. "Die ugaritischen Verben teniae ' und ihre Modi." UgaritForschungen 22:383-396. Verreet, E. 1988. Modi Ugaritici: Eine morpho-syntaktische Abhandlung über das Modalsystem im Ugaritischen (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 27). Leuven: Uitgeveru Peeters. Waltke, Bruce K. & M. O'Connor. 1990. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Wright, W. 1979 3rd ed. A Grammar of the Arabic Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

III

PHONOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

ARABIC SEGMENTAL ERRORS AND SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY* Sabah Safi-Stagni King Abdulaziz University

1. Introduction Modern interest in linguistic errors owes its most recent debt to Fromkin (1971), who showed that although slips of the tongue are anomalous, they are by no means random. She pointed out that errors show, among other things, that speakers observe the phonotactic constraints of their language. Shattuck-Hufnagel (1979) and ShattuckHufnagel & Klatt (1980), investigating the role of phonetic similarity in single segment substitution, found that errors occur more likely if the competing segments available during processing are phonologically similar than if they are not. Shattuck-Hufnagel (1983) found that the majority of segmental exchange errors involve single consonants or vowels, and can involve exchanges of consonant clusters. She also pointed out that most sound exchanges occur between onset consonants in stressed syllables. To account for segmental slips, she proposed a serial ordering mechanism in sentence production that involves the scanning and copying of consonants or vowels into independently computed slots. (See Shattuck-Hufnagel (1983) for a detailed description of the model.) In the late sixties, Boomer & Laver (1968) had described what they called the Syllabic Similarity Hypothesis, whereby phonological segments involved in error occupy corresponding syllabic positions. I would like to thank Keith Walters for his valuable comments on this paper. Its shortcomings, however, remain mine.

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Fromkin (1973), describing the same phenomenon, called it the Fifth Law of Lapses, whereby phonemes in initial syllabic positions exchange with those in initial position, nuclear exchange with nuclear, and final exchange with final. Accordingly, interchanged segments always belong to the same syllabic position, i.e, syllable final consonants never exchange with syllable initial consonants. In addition Shattuck-Hufnagel (1983) showed a high statistical tendency of exchanged elements in segmental errors to occupy corresponding positions in their new environments. (For examples from English, see Appendix A.) Clements & Keyser (1983), using segmental error data as well as other sources of phonological argumentation, argued for the flat syllable structure illustrated in (la) as opposed to the standard binary syllable structure in (lb). (la)

(lb) Syllable /

Syllable \

Onset Peak Coda

/

Onset

\

Core / \ Peak Coda

They pointed out that the syllable structure in (lb) cannot account for errors like (2) below, where the exchange of the segments [ru:] and [li:] affects the onset and the peak, leaving the coda behind. (2)

leaf is ruking (roof is leaking.)

Fudge (1987), however, argued that errors like (2) are relatively rare and concluded that the branching syllable structure in (lb) better accounts for the majority of error data. For over a decade, the syllable constituent structure in (lb), along with the Syllable Position Constraint (SPC) described above, has been understood to provide the framework for the language production mechanism used during the processing of segments (Fromkin 1971; Kahn 1976; Blumstein 1978; Buckingham 1980, 1986; Stemberger 1982), and has been used to account for diverse phenomena, including aspects of child language, the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, slips-of-

ARABIC SEGMENTAL ERRORS AND SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY 171 the-tongue, the structure of language games, and certain aspects of the speech of aphasics. Researchers subscribing to this position have all argued that segmental errors affect segments in analogous syllabic slots and obey structural syllable position constraints. Syllabic position seems to guide errors and govern speech production such that consonantal segments involved in movement errors obey syllabic slot constraints and move to corresponding syllable positions, where onsets move to onset positions and codas to coda positions. (Buckingham 1986:205)

Thus, errors have been observed where an onset is exchanged with an onset as in (3) and those where a coda is anticipated in a coda position as in (4). (3)

barn door (darn bore)

(4)

sub observation (such observation)

Predictably however, no errors such as (5a) or (5b) have been reported. (5) a. * rarn bode (darn bore) b. *darb nore (darn bore)

Data from slips-of-the-tongue (Buckingham 1980) and aphasic language (Blumstein 1978; Buckingham 1986) have been used to argue persuasively for the psychological reality of the Syllable Position Constraint (SPC), which has often been assumed to be universal. Unfortunately, the data used in this earlier research have largely come from Indo-European languages. Consequently, the constraint has not been tested in relation to data from a non-Indo-European language like Arabic. It is the purpose of this paper to do so. 2. Data and Analysis The data for this paper were collected by the author following the traditional notebook technique of recording on-line naturally occurring slips in the speech of close family, friends, and colleagues. The slips

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were written down in Arabic orthography immediately after being uttered, and then broadly transcribed. Phonetic discrepancies that could not be captured by the Arabic orthography (e.g., actual dialectal pronunciation of /q/ as /g/) were immediately transcribed using the IPA symbols. Next to each slip, notes were recorded at the time of the utterance on factors that may have contributed to the error: participants (who made the utterance and to whom), context, etc. The errors were then classified according to the traditional taxonomy of speech errors. Table 1 gives the percentages of the Arabic slips that occurred in each category, with examples from the Arabic corpus given in Appendix B for each category. Table 1. Classification of the Arabic corpus of slips along traditional categories. DESCRIPTION

N

Percentage

Segmental Exchanges - segments Exchanges - roots Anticipation/Perseveration Substitutions Deletions Lexical Exchanges Substitutions - meaning Substitutions - form Blends Morphological Shifts Additions Syntactic Blends TOTAL

64 27 08 17 11 01 45 08 14 04 19 03 01 02 03 03 115

55.65 23.47 06.96 14.78 09.57 00.87 39.13 06.96 12.17 03.48 16.52 02.61 00.87 01.74 02.61 02.61 100.00

Table 1 shows the highest percentage of errors in the Arabic corpus involved segments, with more than 55% of the total. Of the 64 segmental errors, sound exchanges constitute 42% of the total (Table 2), and as such they outnumber all other types of sound errors (e.g., anticipation/perseveration or substitution). Examples from Arabic for each category of segmental errors are given in Appendix C.

ARABIC SEGMENTAL ERRORS AND SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY 173 Table 2. The distribution of segmental errors in the Arabic corpus. Description Exchanges - segments Exchanges - roots Anticipation/Perseveration Substitutions | Deletions Total

N

Percentage

27 08 17 11 01 64

42.19 12.50 26.56 17.19 01.56 100.00

Nearly 70% of the segmental errors followed the presumed universal Syllable Position Constraint with errors affecting segments in corresponding syllable positions, as illustrated in examples (6)-(8). (6) (7) (8)

bunnaabi Sala punni (punnaabi pala bunni) (maroon or brown). aj-jins w al-?in (al-?ins w aj-jin) (the humans and the jinn). naami raayim (raami naayim) (Rami [is] sleeping).

Examples (6)-(8) illustrate sound exchanges between consonants occupying the onset positions of their respective syllables. The exchanges followed the same syllable restrictions that appear to govern the English data, where the exchanged sounds moved from onset to onset. It is interesting to note that the error in (7) demonstrates the phonemic psychological reality of the glottal stop /?/ in Arabic, which changes slots with /j/. In addition, the definite article /al/ has undergone the morphophonemic accommodation [aj] required for its new environment. Although examples like (6-8) seem to respect SPC, some 30% of the exchanges do not. The examples that follow show segmental movements that violate SPC. (9) jowz (zowj) "pair"

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SABAH SAFI-STAGNI

Example (9) offers a case in which the onset /z/ exchanged places with the coda / j / of the same syllable. This seems to hold true even in bisyllabic words whether the site of exchange is the first syllable in the word, as in (10), or the second as in (11). (10) (11)

katsi (taksi) "taxi" pasiir (pariis) "bridegroom"

In (10) the onset /t/ changed places with the coda /k/ of the first syllable, while in (11) the onset /r/ exchanged with the coda /s/ of the second syllable, with both exchanges occurring within the same syllable. This type of segmental movement extends to trisyllabic words where exchanges occur between the onset and the coda of the third syllable. In (12) the onset DJ changed positions with the coda /k/, again within the same syllable. (12)

masaakil masaalik

"tracts"

The observed segmental movement can affect a segment within a consonant cluster. /p/ and /s/ in (13) exchanged positions even though /s/ is part of the consonant cluster /st/. The /t/ is the clitic indicating first person singular. (13)

nisipt (nipist) "I felt sleepy"

In the Arabic corpus, segmental movements are not restricted to the same syllable. In fact they cross syllable boundary. In (14), the exchange occurred across a syllable boundary; the coda of the first target syllable /f/ changed places with the onset of the second target syllable /s/. (14)

nasfi (nafsi)

"myself'

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175

The final /i/ in (14), the genitive marker for 1st singular "my", marks a morpheme boundary. (The application of Shattuck-Hufnagel (1983) serial ordering mechanism takes place after the completion of all morphosyntactic processes.) The /s/ is resyllabified to act as the onset of the second syllable. Thus the error is the result of an exchange between the coda and the onset of two contiguous syllables. (But see examples 16-19). Although in (15), the error includes a different kind of morpheme, the irregular plural morpheme, the exchange nevertheless involves a coda /m/ and an onset /s/, again crossing a contiguous syllable boundary. (15)

gusmaan (gumsaan) "shirts"

The examples in (16)-(19) are free of inflections and clitics yet exhibit the same phenomenon. The syllabification rules /t/ in (16) and (17), /n/ in (18), and /h/ in (19) assign to the codas of the first syllables, and they assign /w/ in (16), /p/ in (17), /h/ in (18) and /l/ in (19) to the onsets of the second target syllables. But repeatedly, the exchanges are between onsets and codas of different syllables. (16) (17) (18) (19)

tawtiir (tatwiir) maptam (matpam) mihna (minha) kulha (kuhla)

"development" "restaurant" "grant" "eyeliner"

Although errors such as (14)-(19) have been traditionally described as cases of metathesis, their significance to the SPC cannot be ignored. The segmental movement does in fact take place between onsets and codas regardless of syllabic position violating SPC. Such consonantal movement disobeying syllabic slot restrictions is not restricted to adjacent consonants, as evident in examples (20) and (21). Ignoring the clitics in (20), the nominative -t- "I" and the objective -ha "her/it", the

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error still involves the onset of the first syllable HI and the coda of the second syllable /s/ in the stem /lahas/. (20)

sahaltaha (lahastaha) "I licked it"

The violation of SPC is not confined to contiguous syllables. In a quadri-syllabic word (21), the onset /r/ of the third syllable changed slots with the coda /p/ of the first syllable, crossing in the process two syllable boundaries. (21)

markapuna (mapkaruna)

"macaroni"

Although kaahil and kaalih in (22) are possible lexical items related to the target in Hijazi, the error nevertheless shows that the consonantal components of the root /hlk/ are easily movable during production. The movement of the consonantal segments is possible irrespective of their original position vis-à-vis the vocalic component. (22)

dalaam kaahil.. dalaam kaalih .. dalaam haalik (dalaam haalik) "dark pitch"

Examples (23) and (24) illustrate multiple movements that result in complex errors. They both have a C1VC2C3VC4 structure. One possible analysis exchanges C 2 with C4 followed by an exchange of C3 with the new C4. In other words, the coda of the first syllable exchanged with the coda of the second syllable creating /pansah/ in (23) and /tuhlus/ in (24); this was followed by an exchange between the onset and the new coda of the second syllable, thus resulting in /panhas/ and /tuhsul/, respectively. (23)

Panhas (pahsan)

"better"

ARABIC SEGMENTAL ERRORS AND SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY 177 (24)

tuhsul (tusluh)

"good"

Errors (22)-(24), which involve several movements, demonstrate that consonants enjoy a flexibility of movement in and out of syllable positions regardless of their original target slots. Examples (9)-(24) seem to violate the Syllable Position Constraint since the rearrangement of the consonantal segments during production pays little or no attention to the syllabic position occupied by the consonants. Syllable final consonants in fact exchange places with syllable initial consonants, thus challenging the universality of the SPC. These examples also show that the mechanism responsible for the misordering (the scan-copier in Shattuck-Hufnagel's (1983) model) must operate independently of vowels or their positions, manipulating only the consonantal components. Interestingly, none of the segmental errors in this corpus involved vowels or combinations of consonant and vowel as exemplified by (2). On the basis of this corpus, one can stipulate that the manipulation of consonantal segments during production occurs at a stage prior to the combination or insertion of vowels. The errors must have occurred at a stage where the processor had no access to vowels. At some level of processing, there seems to be a dissociation of the consonantal and vocalic components of the lexical item, consonants being processed separately from vowels prior to unification. In order to explain such a behavior, one can invoke the nonconcatenative nature of Semitic languages such as Arabic. McCarthy (1981) suggested that stems in Semitic languages consist primarily of two discontinuous morphemes, one referring to the triconsonantal root which carries the principal meaning and the other being the vocalic pattern which induces some modifications to the meaning. The stem results from mapping the vocalic pattern onto the root morpheme. Under McCarthy's formulation, the root morpheme is represented on an autosegmental tier (25a) and the vocalic pattern on another (25b) (McCarthy 1981:388).

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CVCVC \ / k t b \ /

(25b)

CVCVC \ / a i

The result of mapping the two tiers is a meaningful pronounceable lexical item. Evidently, in slips of the tongue there is a misordering of root consonants at their tier, which is dissociated from vocalic segments. The misordered consonants pay no heed to their ultimate slotting vis-à-vis the vowels. Only by resorting to the above description where the consonants CCC are presented to the processor on a different template from their vowels can we expect movements that are not bounded or restricted by vowels. The manipulation of consonants that disregard the vocalic component can be explained only when we have the psycholinguistic representations of these consonants presented to the processor separately from the vocalic patterns. The processor can then manipulate consonants regardless of their vocalic context resulting in the observed errors. Additional independent evidence comes from borrowings, where native speakers abstract a triconsonantal root from the borrowed form and derive the desired lexical item by applying the appropriate vocalic pattern: the broken plural pattern paCCaaC in (26) and the passive pattern patCaCaC in (27). (26) (27)

patraam (term + plural) patfakas (fix + passive)

"terms" "it has been fixed"

Consonantal movements irrespective of vowel position can result in intriguing errors. In (28), for example, it is not clear which segment of the geminate /t/ changed places with HI. (28)

tašša (šatta) "hot sauce"

ARABIC SEGMENTAL ERRORS AND SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY 179 The only plausible explanation for this error is that the manipulation of the consonantal segments took place before the realization of gemination since the error was neither *tašta nor *tatša. Therefore, the representation of the root must have contained only two consonants (rather than three), the second of which was marked for gemination. The exchange took place prior to the realization of the gemination feature, resulting in the gemination of /š/ (the second consonant in the new error environment) rather than /t/ (the second in the target). Geminate consonants, therefore, appear to be treated by the processor as a single unit, with gemination as a C-slot feature. The exchanges affecting the root before the realization of gemination. The above behavior of geminates is not peculiar to Arabic. Although involving the written system and a pathologically acquired deficit, Caramazza & Miceli (1990) report similar findings in Italian. They describe a 64-year-old aphasic patient who made similar errors in writing geminates. The patient was asked to write to dictation Italian words that contained geminate graphemes (29). They found that the most frequent error with geminates produced by their aphasic patient involves the shift of the geminate feature from one position to another. (29)

sorrela (sorella)

"sister"

Responses of the type *solrela and *sorlela were not found in their patient's corpus of errors. This lead Caramazza & Miceli (1990) to postulate that the graphemic structure represents geminates as a single grapheme with gemination as an independent feature. 3. Conclusion The linear segmental errors presented in this paper do not obey the SPC proposed for languages such as English, where onsets move to onset positions, coda to coda positions, etc. In Arabic, consonantal segments involved in errors move to non-corresponding syllable positions. Further evidence for this phenomenon comes from data collected from child language acquisition. For example, data collected from a three-year-old Hijazi boy demonstrate the processor's ability to exchange consonantal segments irrespective of their syllabic positions.

180

SABAH SAFI-STAGNI (30) (31) (32)

kabana (kanaba) paftarraj (patfarraj) sahamti (samahti)

"sofa" "I watch" "you permitted"

The exchanged consonants in (30) occupy corresponding syllabic positions, namely, the onsets of their respective syllables. However, /t/ and /f/ in (31) and /m/ and /h/ in (32) show movement that violates SPC. Evidently, there may be a misordering of root consonants at their tier, which is dissociated from vocalic segments. The misordered consonants pay no heed to their ultimate slotting vis-à-vis the vowels. These segmental errors also demonstrate an interesting dissociation of consonantal roots and vocalic patterns since they affect only the consonants in the phonological representations. The dissociation of consonantal roots and vocalic patterns, which has not been observed in error data from Western languages, supports McCarthy's proposed twotier autosegmental representation for Semitic languages, where one tier contains the consonantal roots while the other tie contains the vocalic patterns. It also challenges the universal applicability of the Syllable Position Constraint in segmental linear ordering errors. It is premature to draw any conclusions regarding the preferred syllable structure for Arabic, i.e., which of syllable structure (la) or (lb) would best describe the data presented here. The intriguing point, however, is that the coda seems to dissociate easily from the core and exchange freely with the onset, pointing strongly to Clements & Keyser (1983) flat syllable structure.

ARABIC SEGMENTAL ERRORS AND SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY 181 APPENDIX A Segmental errors from English that seem to obey the "Syllable Position Constraint" (Fromkin 1973). 1. mazagine (magazine) 2. Jay Rackendoff (Ray Jackendoff) 3. teep a kape (keep a tape) 4. the nipper is zarrow (the zipper is narrow) 5. blake fruid (brake fluid) 6. sprigtime for Hintler (springtime for Hitler)

182

SABAH SAFI-STAGNI APPENDIX B

Examples of errors from the Arabic corpus. I.

Segmental See Appendix C.

n. 1.

Lexical Exchanges pawarriik ad-duhur fi piz an-nujuum (pawarriik an-nujuum fi piz ad-duhur) "I'll show you that stars at noon."

2.

Substitutions - meaning ma-hum galiil (ma-hum katiir) "They (are) not few."

3.

Substitutions - form majallat at-tilifon (majallat at-tilifîzyon) "Television magazine."

4.

Blends gamayiz (balayiz + gumsaan) "shirts"

III. Morphological 1. Shifts yada al-kibda (al-yada kibda) "The lunch (is) liver." 2.

Additions palwaanaat (palwaan) "colors"

IV. Syntactic Blends 1. raayih yisalli fi-1-maγrib (raayih yisalli-l-mayrib + raayih yisalli fi-1-masjid) "He (is) going to pray maghrib + he (is) going to pray in the mosque."

ARABIC SEGMENTAL ERRORS AND SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY APPENDIX C Examples of segmental errors from the Arabic corpus. 1.

Exchanges - segments hitza but (bitza hut) "Pizza Hut"

2.

Exchanges - roots sugf u gattaab gutb u saggaaf "Qutb & Saggaf '

3.

Anticipation xanaan xayfa (hanaan xayfa) "Hanan (is) afraid."

4.

Perseveration mukafahat al-muhadaraat (mukafahat al-muxadaraat) "fighting drugs"

5.

Substitution pataba (pataba) "door step"

6.

Deletion tifizyon (tilifizyon) "television"

183

184

SABAH SAFI-STAGNI REFERENCES

Blumstein, Sheila. 1978. "Segment Structure and the Syllable in Aphasia". Syllables and Segments ed. by A. Bell & J. B. Hooper. Amsterdam: North Holland. Boomer, D. S. & John D. M. Laver. 1968. "Slips of the Tongue". British Journal of Disorders of Communication. 3.2-12. Buckingham, Hugh W. 1980. "On Correlating Aphasic Errors with Slips-of-theTongue". Applied Psycholinguistics 1.199-220. . 1986. "The Scan-Copier Mechanism and the Positional Level of Language Production: Evidence from phonemic paraphasia". Cognitive Science 10.195217. Caramazza, Alfonso & Gabriele Miceli. 1990. "The Structure of Graphemic Representations". Cognition 27.243-297. Clements, George N. & Samuel J. Keyser. 1983. CVPhonology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Fromkin, Victoria. 1971. "The Non-Anomalous Nature of Anomalous Utterances". Language 47.27-52. . 1973. Speech Errors as Linguistic Evidence. The Hague: Mouton. Fudge, E. 1987. "Branching Structure within the Syllable". Journal of Linguistics 23.359-377. Kahn, Daniel. 1976. Syllable Based Generalizations in English Phonology. MIT Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, Mass. McCarthy, John. 1981. "A Prosodic Theory of Nonconcatenative Morphology". Linguistic Inquiry 12:3.373-416. Shattuck-Hufnagel, Stefanie. 1979. "Speech Errors as Evidence for a SerialOrdering Mechanism in Sentence Production". Sentence Processing: Psycholinguistic studies presented to Merrill Garrett ed. by W. E. Cooper & E. C. Walker. Hillsdale, N.J.: Earlbaum. . 1983. "Sublexical Units and Suprasegmental Structure in Speech Production Planning". The Production of Speech ed. by P. F. MacNeilage. New York: Springer Verlage. & Klatt, Dennis H. 1980. "How Single Phoneme Error Data Rule out Two Models of Error Generation". Errors in Linguistic Performance: Slips of the tongue, ear, pen, and hand ed. by V. Fromkin. New York: Academic Press. Stemberger, Joseph P. 1982. "The Nature of Segments in the Lexicon: Evidence from speech errors". Lingua 56.235-259.

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE?*

Basim Majdi University of Connecticut Millicent Winston Laval University

1. Introduction Hooper (1972) proposes universal theories of syllabification which involve three major claims: (1) all languages have essentially the same syllable structure assignment rules; (2) syllable structure is initially assigned on the domain of the word; and (3) syllable structure assignment precedes the application of all phonological rules. Based on her analysis of Cairene Arabic, Broselow (1979) argues against Hooper's hypothesis that all syllabification rules, in particular, Epenthesis and Syncope, precede all phonological rules. The scope of this paper is limited to the phonological phenomenon raised in Broselow (1979). That is, whether sandhi rules are pre- or post-syllable structure. In this paper we argue in support of Selkirk's (1982) viewpoint that syllable structure is the proper characterization of the domain of application of a wide range of rules of segmental phonology, and that more productive vowel deletion and epenthesis processes are to be seen as prosodic phenomena (Itô 1989) that are not to be accounted for by obligatory skeletal rules of Epenthesis and *We are grateful to an anonymous referee of Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics for helping us to improve this paper.We would also like to thank Yasmeen Jan-Mohamed for her help in converting the manuscript into the Macintosh format.

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Syncope, but are instead a function of the universal processes which relate morphologically-structured segmental strings with syllable structures. We base our argument on the analysis of data from Cairene Arabic (CA) cited in Broselow, of data from Tunisian Arabic (TA) and Iraqi Arabic (IA). In these three varieties of Arabic, sandhi rules are natural consequences of the phonetic environments created by Word Formation Rules (WFRs). The stranding of certain segments which do not fit into the prescribed templates for syllabification triggers Epenthesis to save the unsyllabified consonants1, and triggers Syncope to remove the stranded syllable heads.2 This paper is organized as follows: In section 2, we outline the analysis presented in Broselow, and then give similar cases from TA and IA analyzed in a pre-syllabic or skeletal framework. In section 3, we present an analysis of the same phenomena within a prosodic theory ( Itô 1989). The analysis will show that Epenthesis results from the interrelated requirements of prosody and can, therefore, be accommodated in terms of variable directionality of syllabification. However, we will show that the principle of Directionality does not always give the right results. In section 4, we motivate a different approach (Majdi 1988; Majdi & Winston 1993) of syllable structure and stress assignment, and show that the phonological phenomena under investigation follow automatically from the interaction of rules and principles of this approach. 2. Rules Application: Pre-Syllabic Requirements The main argument in Broselow is that ordering rules of syllable structure assignment before some phonological rules is preferred if (1) the phonological rule may be simplified by being permitted to refer to syllable structure, or (2) some generalization may be captured which is lost or obscured if the rule is written in terms of segments rather than syllable structure. Following this argument, Broselow shows that two phonological phenomena in CA can be handled quite simply with reference to the syllable: first, emphasis in CA never occurs as the feature of a single segment in a word; its minimum *As in other Semitic languages, there is a general restriction on consonant deletion in Arabic (Majdi 1988; Majdi & Winston 1993). 2 Arabic also does not allow syllables of the types V and VC.

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 187 domain is CV; second, Degemination is also syllable-conditioned in CA. However, Broselow argues that the sandhi rules, Epenthesis (EP) and High-Vowel Deletion (HVD), do not follow the same pattern discussed above. First, the rule of EP breaks up clusters of three consonants, which are never found on the surface in CA. Consider (1). (The italicized i is inserted.) (1) a. katábt b. makatábts

"you (M) wrote" "you (M) didn't write"

EP applies to three-consonant clusters even across word boundaries as in (2). (2) a. katábti gawáab

"you (F) wrote a letter"

Thus the domain of EP is the phrase and is accounted for by rule (3). (3) EP: 0 —> i / CC #o

C

The second sandhi rule, HVD, deletes a high vowel in a two-sided open syllable as shown in (4b,c), but not in (4a). (4) a. kátab "he wrote" → b. šírib "hedrank" → c. táakul "you (M) eat" →

kátabu "they wrote" šírbu "they drank" táklu "you (P) eat"

HVD, like EP, operates across words as in (5). (5) a. šírib ilmáyya b. ábu huséen

→ →

šír-b ilmáyya "he drank the water" ábu h-séen "Hussein's father"

HVD is accounted for by a rule such as (6).3

3 Notice that rule (6) cannot account for V-shortening in (4c). If V-shortening is not syllable-conditioned, then we need another context-sensitive rule to derive the surface representation in (4c).

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When EP and HVD are applied consecutively, they must follow a strict order. In such case, EP applies first as in (7a). The opposite order would give an incorrect output as in (7b). (7) a. UR: EP: HVD: SR: b. UR: HVD: EP: SR:

bint kibiira binti kibiira binti kbiira binti kbiira

"a big girl"

bint kibiira NA binti kibiira *binti kibiira

Broselow argues that the syllable structure of the underlying and surface representations of a phrase like (7) is different, as in (8a,b), respectively. (8)

Since the domain of syllabification rules is the word, its performance on (8a) before the application of the sandhi rules which convert it to (8b) would complicate the grammar by the need for a resyllabification of the string. We agree with Broselow on her argument that phonological rules are permitted to refer to syllable structure only when such reference simplifies the grammar. However, we depart from her in the way this goal is reached. First, we believe that the grammar would be more

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 189

complicated if rules application is classified into two domains: for some, such as the sandhi rules, it is the phrase, while for others, such as syllabification, it is the word. Second, geminates have been treated in generative phonology as two segments (see, for example, Schein & Steriade 1986), similar to a cluster of two consonants.4 Therefore, if we allow the former, but not the latter, to refer to syllable structure we would miss an overall generalization. For example, there will not be a clear explanation why the final geminates are reduced5, but the consonant cluster in /bint/ of (8) is not. Further, the assumption that rules of sandhi operate before syllable structure rules, as shown in (7), require a rule ordering, a condition which complicates the grammar rather than simplifies it. Word Formation in two other varieties of Arabic, Tunisian Arabic and Iraqi Arabic, are also subject to the same or similar phonological rules. In 2.1, we present some cases from TA, and in 2.2, some others from IA. 2.1 Tunisian Arabic Like CA, Tunisian Arabic also allows Degemination which results from the deletion of an unstressed vowel in certain grammatical contexts. First, in some feminine nouns the addition of a possessive suffix results in changes in the stem itself (Wise 1983), as shown in (9c), but not in (9a,b). (9) a. qúffa "basket"

b. qúffitna c. "our basket"

qúfti "my basket"

Degemination also occurs in the formation of the 3rd perfective verb as in (10). (10) a. zawwiz b. rawwah c. tarrad

4

"he brought in" → "he went home" → "he rejected" →

zawzu rawhu tardu

"they brought in" "they went home" "they rejected"

Within the moraic theory (McCanhy & Prince 1986, 1990; Hayes 1989), underlying geminates and other consonant clusters are represented differently in the lexicon. (See Section 4.) 5 Compare /kub/ "he spilled" and /kubbu/ "they spilled".

BASIMMAJDDI& MILLICENT WINSTON

190

The deletion of the unstressed vowel in the formation of the feminine not only requires Degemination, but also blocks Antigemination, a violation of the Obligatory Control Principle (OCP) (McCarthy 1986), as shown in (11). (11) a. msammim b. mitγaššiš

"determined (M)" → "angry (M)" →

msamma mitγašša

"F" "F"

It is important to mention here that TA, unlike CA, allows a medial cluster of three consonants, as shown in (12). (12) a. karhabitna b. majinsaas

~ ~

karhbitna "ourcar" majnsaas "he doesn't forget"

Thus the reduction of the geminate in (9) cannot be attributed to a restriction on consonant clusters in TA. If we follow the argument raised in Broselow that Syncope in TA applies before syllabification, then we need a rule like (13) to handle Degemination in (9), (10), and (11). (13) Also, rule (6) needs to be reformulated, as in (14), to handle HVD of the data in (10)and(ll).6 (14) HVD: v

—> Ø / v #0 (Ci)Ci C #0 v

[+high -str -long

2.2 Iraqi Arabic In IA, the formation of the perfective and imperfective verbs also involves the application of Syncope. Following the traditional analysis 6

The single consonant in (14) can either be different from the geminate to handle (10) or identical to the geminate to handle (11). In the latter, there will be a violation of the OCP.

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 191

(see, for example, Odden 1978), we assume that the perfective and imperfective stems of the consonantal root /ktb/ are /kitab/ and /kitib/, respectively. The derivations of these two verbs can be illustrated in (15) and (16). → →

(15) a. kítab+tu b. kítab+aw (16) a. ti+kMb b. ti+kítib+an

→ →

kitábtu kítbaw

"you (M) wrote" "they (M) wrote"

tíktib tikřtban

"you (M,S) write" "you (F,P) write"

The alternation involves the deletion of the second vowel of the stem in (15b), but not in (a), and the first vowel of the stem in (16a), but the second vowel of the stem in (b). As predicted by rule (14), an unstressed vowel is deleted in a two-sided open syllable, though such deletion in IA involves a high vowel as well as a low vowel. However, unlike TA, IA does not violate the OCP: it always maintains Antigemination (Majdi 1988; Majdi & Winston 1993). Consider the examples in (17). (17) a. baddal+at b. baddad+at

→ →

badlat "she changed" baddidat "she wasted"

The IA data of (17) require a more restricted rule than (14) to block the deletion of the second vowel of the stem in (b) but not in (a), as formulated in (18).7 (See also Odden 1978.) (18) v

→Ø

/v(Ci)Ci

Cj V

[-stress]

Also, morphological affixation in IA involves Syncope and/or Epenthesis. Consider the examples in (19). (19) a. kitab+t+1+na

→

kitabtilna

"you (M,S) wrote to us"

b. kitab+t+1+ak

→

kitabitlak

"I wrote to you (M,S)"

7 Notice that in each variety of Arabic we need a specific rule to handle Degemination or Epenthesis. Here we miss the important generalization that the phenomena handled by such rules have the same function.

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If rule (3) of Epenthesis is applied to the underlying representations of (19) outside the context of syllabification, it will fail to give the right surface representations. Instead, it will give the wrong derivations shown in (20a,b), respectively.8 (20) a.

*kitabtilina

b. *kitabtilak

To derive the correct surface representations we need to formulate another EP rule to handle the IA data of (19), as in (21). (21) Ø → i / C

C C V (C) #

A rule like (21) would never simplify the grammar. Further, it does not explain why Epenthesis takes place in a context different from that of CA. The analysis of the data from CA, TA, and IA above shows that sandhi rules play a crucial role in the phonology of these three varieties of Arabic. The analysis also shows a difference in the application of these rules due to the phonotactics of these three varieties of Arabic, However, analyzing sandhi rules as pre-syllable structure requirements would face the following problems: (1) it presumes that the context for Epenthesis and Syncope must be learned. There is no clear evidence that a child learning the phonology of his/her language would memorize such rules. (2) It misses an important generalization that sandhi rules in these languages follow from the same principles of grammar. As a result, each time the rule fails to apply, there is a need to impose contextual conditions on these rules or to have recourse to languague specific rules, as in accounting for Epenthesis in CA and IA, and for Degemination and Antigemination in CA and TA. (3) These rules have no explanatory power. They raise, but do not address, the question of why sandhi rules are required in certain contexts but not in others. Further, Broselow's approach does not conform to the theory of Lexical Phonology developed by Kiparsky (1982, 1985), Mohanan 8 If rule (3) applies to (19a) it will first insert /i/ between /!/ and /n/. However, the derived form /kitab+t+lina/ still meets the structural description of rule (3). Rule (3) then applies cyclically to insert another /i/ between /t/ and /I/, giving *[kitabtilina].

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 193

(1982). In this theory the assumption is that all rules which apply across the boundaries must of necessity be postlexical, since, with the exception of lexicalized phrases, all structures larger than words arise in the syntax, and hence outside the lexicon. Also typically postlexical are those phonetically conditioned rules whose application is sensitive to syllable structure. This is due to the fact that the syllable structure of words may change once words appear in connected speech (see, for example, Rubach 1985). We believe that sandhi rules in CA, TA, and IA follow from universal principles which relate such rules to syllable structure requirements without recourse to language specific rules. In fact, these rules would become a requirement of each variety of Arabic to preserve the consonantal structure of each lexical item and to create well-formed syllables across morpheme or word boundaries. This requirement has been well recognized in Prosodic Theory (McCarthy 1979 and subsequent works, and many other phonologists). Prosodic Theory requires that all phonological units belong to higher prosodie structure: segments to syllables, syllables to metrical feet, and metrical feet to phonological words or phrases. In this system, skeletal rules become undesirable since they impose further conditions to prevent nonexistent types of rules from arising (Itô 1989). In the following section we discuss Itô's (1989) prosodie approach to the analysis of Epenthesis in CA and IA.

3. Rules in Prosodie Theory Within the Moraic Theory proposed by Hyman (1985) and McCarthy & Prince (1986), Itô (1989:240) argues against the superfluous way that skeletal rules determine the right sites of Epenthesis. In a prosodie analysis, Epenthesis sites are determined by the independently needed syllable conditions of the language. Epenthesis occurs where it does, not because it satisfies the structural description of an obligatory rule, but because syllable structure dictates the only possible and necessary insertion site. She proposes that the observed variations can be accommodated by principles of Directionality and Maximality. The directionality of the syllabification process varies from one language to another. While it is left-to-right in CA, it is right-to-left in IA.

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BASIM MAJDI & MILLICENT WINSTON

In CA, an epenthetic i breaks up a triconsonantal C 1 C 2 C 3 cluster between C 2 and C 3 (22a), whereas in IA the cluster is split between C1 and C 2 (22b). (22) a. CCC → CCiC (CA) b. CCC → C/CC (IA)

But in both dialects, quadriconsonantal clusters are broken up between C2 and C3, as in (23). (23) CCCC → CCiCC (CA and IA)

This is illustrated in (24a,b) for CA and (25a,b) for IA, where the (a) examples have triconsonantal and the (b) examples have quadriconsonantal clusters. (24)

(25)

CA Epenthesis: 0 → CC

C

a. /pul-t-1-u/

→

pultilu

"I said to him"

b. /pul-t-l-ha/

→

pultilha

"I said to her"

IA Epenthesis: Ø → C a. /gil-t-1-a/ b. /gil-t-1-ha/

→ →

gilita giltilha

CC "I said to him" "I said to her"

The mapping of the mora structures for the CA form Pultilu and the IA form gilitla is shown in (26).

Both CA and IA have the same surface mora and syllable types. However, they differ in the directionality of syllabification, and hence in determining the site of Epenthesis. The moraic CA form (26a) has the syllabification in (27).

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 195

If we follow the directionality of left-to-right in CA, then the leftmost two moras [?u] and [1] in (31) form a syllable. Itô argues that sonority disallows the next two moras [t] and [lu] to form one syllable.9 Therefore, the unmarked vowel i must be inserted to save the unsyllabified consonant by acting as an onset to a Degenerate Syllable (i.e., a syllable lacking segmental nuclei). The syllabification for IA proceeds in the opposite direction. The moraic IA form (26b) has the syllabification in (28).

Starting from the right (28a), the first mora [la] forms a syllable. As is the case in CA, it is not possible to syllabify the last two moras [tla] as one syllable because this violates sonority. Proceeding to the middle of the string in (28b), the two moras [1] and [t] are mapped onto one syllable, and the vowel i must be inserted to license the unsyllabified consonants. The resulting structures will give a light syllable in CA and a heavy syllable in IA. In the case of quadriconsonantal examples (24b) for CA and (25b) for IA, Itô argues that directionality is not crucial to syllabification. 9

We will argue later in this section against the sonority reason for disallowing such a syllable.

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Whether it comes from the right in IA or from the left in CA, the medial unsyllabified consonants will create heavy syllables in both dialects. In such a case Maximality dictates formation of a heavy syllable in both cases. Itô's account of Epenthesis as a prosodic requirement in both CA and IA is an insightful analysis of the nature of this phonological phenomenon. Also, her proposal of incorporating variable directionality in the syllabification of the two dialects gives the right results in the data under investigation. However, it lacks a deep characterization of the mechanism of syllabification in the two dialects. The argument, for example, that the last two moras [tlu]/[tla] in (27a) and (28a) are disallowed to form one syllable because this violates sonority is not relevant if we know that such violation is allowed in IA in initial position as in [nkitab] "it was written" and [msammim] "he is determined". However, such violation is not allowed in a medial position, and the only reason is that IA does not allow a branching onset in a medial position. CA, on the other hand, does not allow a branching onset even in initial position. However, CA allows a final branching coda even if this violates sonority as in [xamr] "wine", [?abl] "before", whereas IA does not permit such a branching coda. In addition, incorporating directionality in syllabification does not always give the right results. Consider, for example, Vowel Epenthesis in (29) which involves two different words in CA (see McCarthy & Prince 1990:13). (29) a. Vowel Insertion in #C-C Context in Loans plastic → bilastik b. Vowel Insertion in #-CC Context in Templatic Verbs /gtamap/ → igtamap (→ pigtamap) (but not *[gitamap])

The two words both have initial clusters of two consonants. However, following the directionality parameter of left-to-right in CA, we would expect Epenthesis to apply between g and t in (29b) as is the case in (29a), but it occurs before the initial consonant g with the insertion of the glottal stop before the epenthetic vowel. If the left-toright directionality is applied in (29b) it would give the wrong

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derivation *[gitamap]. This means that Epenthesis in this case must go from right-to-left like IA. Such undesirable results can be avoided only if we characterize the mechanism of syllabification in these dailects. Then we can suggest the right solution to rules application. As Selkirk (1981) argues, the difference between CA and IA is whether the unsyllabified consonant is taken as an onset or as a coda of a degenerate syllable. Itô correctly argues that syllabification of the leftmost melodies of (27) and (28) give the desired difference in the medial syllable: a light syllable for CA and a heavy syllable for IA. However, we believe that such a result is due to other factors which play a more crucial role in syllabification (such as stress and the distribution of marked and unmarked syllables), rather than the directionality parameter, and that such factors would decide the sites of rules application. To derive the correct surface representations of the data under investigation, we need to characterize the mechanism of syllabification in the three varieties of Arabic. We assume that TA differs from both CA and IA in that it allows a non-final superheavy syllable (CVVC or CVCC)10 , therefore Syncope is permitted in TA, but it is prohibited in CA and IA when it creates a non-final superheavy syllable. TA is also characterized by having the marked syllable CVC (in the sense of Cairns & Feinstein 1982). Thus, Syncope, for example, is applied wherever such syllable can be created. If TA violates the OCP, as shown in (11), then such violation is motivated by the tendency to create a closed syllable. CA and IA, on the other hand, permit the unmarked syllable CV, but require the marked syllable for stress assignment. Both CA and IA do not permit successive open syllables with [+high] vowels, and therefore Syncope is applied wherever such environments are found. However, in CA, a restriction on Deletion is applied when the vowel involved is [+low].11 In the following section we will test these assumptions about the phonologies of CA, TA, and IA. We will also argue in response to Broselow's proposal that any rule applied without, or outside the 10

The nonfinal superheavy syllable of the form CVCC cannot have a geminate. This restriction is also necessitated by syllable structure and will be discussed in 4.2. 11But when a stressed vowel occurs in an open syllable and is followed by another open syllable with a [-low] head, then Syncope is applied to close the stressed syllable.

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context of syllabification in these languages would make no sense and would burden the grammar with unnecessary complications. To achieve this objective, we suggest that an appropriately formulated Vbar theory of syllable structure and stress assignment, together with an extended theory of markedness (Chomsky & Halle 1968), makes it possible to force the phenomena of Epenthesis, Syncope, and consequently Degemination and Antigemination in these languages. We outline such a theory below. 4. Syllable Structure, Stress and Markedness Here we follow a constituent structure approach to syllable structure. We assume that syllables are projections of vowels and that all segments must be incorporated into syllables (see Michaels 1987; Majdi & Michaels 1987; Majdi 1988; Majdi & Winston 1993). In this approach, V0 (the syllable head) projects a category V'(the rhyme) which optionally licenses a C-position (coda or complement), and V' projects a category V" (the syllable) which obligatorily licenses a Cposition (onset or specifier). We will also assume that stress interacts with syllable structure in the examples under investigation. In CA, TA, and IA, stress occurs in a closed syllable. Thus it appears that stress licenses the coda position in a syllable, and that this position is filled either by the second mora of a long vowel, or by a consonant. The syllable structure projection of the rhyme category optionally licenses a coda position. Under stress, this position is obligatory. Let us say that assigning stress to a syllable marks the syllable head with the licensing feature [+L]. Furthermore, a [+L] syllable head must assign [+L] to its complement in coda position. Finally, a [+L] marked complement cannot be empty, but must be phonetically realized. A [L] complement position, on the other hand, can be empty. The syllable structure theory just outlined gives the syllable projections in (30a,b), where (30a) is a stressed syllable and (30b) is an unstressed syllable.

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 199

In the moraic approach (see McCarthy & Prince 1986, 1990), the mora is the unit by which syllable weight is measured. A heavy syllable contains two moras, while a light syllable contains only one. In our framework, a strong syllable has a branching rhyme which is indicated by the feature [+L]. In this framework, we also argue that stress occurrence determines syllabic composition, though in standard metrical phonology it is the other way around. To support this claim we need to consider again the derivations of (29a and b) which show different directions of Epenthesis. The two words have an initial stranded consonant b-lastik, g-tarnal If we follow the directionality parameter of left-to-right in CA, we will insert a V-slot after each stranded consonant. This will give the syllabic structures (31a,b), respectively.

In (31a), the medial syllable satisfies stress assignment since it has a branching rhyme. Thus Epenthesis after the stranded consonant b creates a well-formed open syllable. If we apply the same principle in (b), it will also create a well-formed open syllable. However, the whole structure will be ruled out since none of the three syllables can

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carry the main stress. 12 We need a closed syllable to meet the requirements of stress assignment. Such a syllable can only be created if g acts as a coda, rather than an onset, and the only way to achieve this is by having Epenthesis operate to the left of the stranded consonant. Finally, a glottal stop can be inserted to the left of the epenthetic vowel to act as an onset to the initial stressed syllable. In 4.1, we argue that stress occurrence also determines the sites of Syncope. Also, rules in our account can be characterized as manifestations of Affect a, where Affect can be insert, delete, etc. and a can be a segment and its projections. However, such rules will widely overapply. They can be constrained by requiring that rule applications are structure preserving, subject to recoverability, and strictly local (i.e., they can only affect adjacent segments). (See Michaels & Majdi 1988.) Within the framework outlined above, let us first analyze the CA data of Epenthesis. In (1), Epenthesis applies in (b), but not in (a). As we mentioned above, CA allows a superheavy syllable only in a final position, (la) does not violate this restriction, and thus Epenthesis does not apply, (lb) is derived from the underlying representation in (32). (32) makatábt+š

—» a. [makatábti š] b, *[makatábitš]

That is, adding the suffix creates a final cluster of three consonants which is not allowed in CA. Rule (3) correctly presumes, but without any explanation, that Epenthesis must occur between the final two consonants. But we know that CA allows a final superheavy syllable, and thus a possible insertion of /i/ can be between /b/ and /t/. However, such insertion would give the wrong derivation (32b). In our system, Affect a applies freely. If /i/ is inserted after /t/, then it will give the syllabic configuration (33).

12 It is important to know that CA, like other dialects of Arabic, does not allow stress to occur in an open syllable with a [+high] vowel.

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The representation in (33) is ill-formed in that it has an empty [+L] coda position. But if insert i applies between the final consonants of the stem and the suffix, it will retain the well-formed stressed syllable, and thus satisfy the requirements of syllabification as in (34).

4.1 Markedness In CA, a vowel is also deleted in a two-sided open syllable. However, there is a restriction on the deletion of the low vowel /a/, as in (4a). But the same restriction does not apply in TA and IA, as shown in (10) and (15b), respectively. Therefore rule (6) can account for Syncope in CA, but will fail to account for the same phenomenon 13 According to the theory of syllable structure outlined above, the onset position is obligatory. A syllable without an onset would be defective, and the whole string would be ruled out.

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in TA and IA. On the other hand, there is a restriction on Syncope in IA if it brings two identical consonants together, as in (17b), but the same restriction does not apply in TA, as in (11). To account for Syncope in these three varieties of Arabic without recourse to language-particular rules, we argue, following the logic of markedness theory (Chomsky & Halle 1968), that segments which do not alternate for some features are fully specified lexically with the appropriate +/values for features, and segments which alternate for some property are lexically specified with appropriate u/m values for that feature. It follows from the same logic that if a segment alternates with zero, it is [useg]. If [useg] receives a structural interpretation as [+seg], then the position receives a segmental interpretation. Segmental interpretation is possible if the unspecified segment is a sister constituent to another segment with +/- values for features, or if it fills an obligatory position as a licenser of a nondeletable consonant. In the latter case, [useg] receives a default interpretation under markedness theory. If there is no structural interpretation, then by convention [useg] → [seg] and thus deletes since it cannot project a syllable head. Thus, the derivation of the perfective (4a,b) and the imperfective (4c) will be underlyingly represented as in (35a,b and c), respectively.14 (35) a. kátVb+Ø kátVb+u b. šírVb+Ø šírVb+u c. táakVl+Ø táakVl+u

→ → → → → →

kátab kátabu šírib šírbu taakul táklu

"3MS" V=[+seg,-high] "3MP" "3MS" V=[useg,uhigh] "3MP" "2MS" V=[useg,uhigh] "2MP"

The addition of the 3MP suffix /-u/ in (35) creates two successive open syllables. However, the second vowel of the stem does not delete in (a) because it is lexically specified as [+seg,-high]. In (b) and (c), the second vowel of the stem would be lexically marked as [useg] since it alternates with zero. In the derivation of the 2 and 3MP, it will have a [-seg] value, and, therefore, does not receive structural interpretation, as shown in (36a,b). 14 The unmarked vowel is interpreted according to the marking conventions (Chomsky & Halle 1968) which yield [+high].

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 203 (36)

*b.

If (35b,c) are syllabified as in (36a,b), they will give ill-formed representations in that the medial consonant is licensed to a head which is marked [-seg]. Further, (36a) has an empty [+L] coda position. To have the correct syllabic representations of (35a,b), the medial consonant must be licensed by the head of the first syllable as in (37a,b), where the unspecified vowel deletes since it cannot receive any structural interpretation. (37)

a.

However (37b) is still ill-formed because CA does not allow a nonfinal superheavy syllable, the long vowel of the first syllable of (37b) must shorten to give the right syllable structure.15 It is important to 15 Recall that rule (6), and the pre-syllabic analysis of Syncope, cannot explain why a long vowel is shortened in certain contexts like that in (37b).

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note here that the moraic analysis would give (37b) a representation like (38).

(38) a.

b.

The heavy syllable is one with two moras. A long vowel occupies both of them as in (38a). Shortening occurs when the length of the vowel gives way under the pressure of the consonant that would otherwise be unsyllabified (McCarthy & Prince 1990). This would give (38b), which still has a heavy syllable but with a short vowel. However, we still need to force the elimination of the second vowel of the stem in taakVl+u; otherwise shortening cannot apply. In our framework, the second mora of the long vowel reduces since the two moras are dominated by V0. By assuming the second vowel of the stem to be unmarked for segment, it turns out to be [-seg] in this particular case, and thus it is deletable. But if [taklu] is underlyingly /taakul+u/, then the second vowel of the stem u cannot be deletable since it occurs in a well-formed syllable. The example in (7) shows that both Syncope and Epenthesis must be applied to derive the surface representation. Among four possible surface outcomes, only one satisfies the principles of syllabification in CA. Let us first assume that no sandhi rules apply to the underlying representation of (7). This will give the first possible outcome (39).

(39)

(39) is ruled out as the right surface representation because it has a non-final superheavy syllable. Now if we break the consonant cluster

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of the first syllable by Epenthesis, it will give the second possible outcome (40). (40)

(40) is also ruled out because Epenthesis triggers the consonant /n/ as an onset, leaving the first syllable with an empty [+L] coda position. If Epenthesis is applied between /t/ and /k/, we get the third possible outcome (41). (41)

The representation in (41) is also ruled out in CA since it has two successive medial open syllables with high vowels. To get the right representation, we need to close one of these open syllables. We assume an alternating stress pattern in CA. That is, stress every other syllable. This requires the consonant /k/ to fill the empty coda position of the preceding syllable as in (42).

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The vowel /i/ is left in a defective syllable, i.e., a syllable that does not project V". Thus, it must delete to give the right surface representation. Like CA, Epenthesis and Syncope in IA follow from the same universal processes which relate morphologically-structured segmental strings to syllable structure. Again, syllabic composition in IA is determined by stress occurrences. While CA allows a stressed open syllable with a [+low] vowel, IA is restricted to the CVC stressed syllable. The examples of (15) show that the second vowel of the stem alternates with zero in the derivation of the 3MP perfective. We, therefore, assume that the second vowel of the perfective stem is lexically specified as [useg, ulow]. These features will be interpreted at the surface as in (43a,b). (43) a. kitVb+tu → kitábtu b. kitVb+aw → kitbaw

V = [+seg, +low] V = [-seg]

(43a,b) will have the syllabic configurations (44a,b), respectively. (44) a.

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 207 b.

In (44a), the unspecified vowel occurs in a well-formed syllable which also carries the main stress. Therefore, the unmarked features of this vowel must be interpreted at the surface as [+seg, +low]. Since the unspecified vowel in (44b) does not project a syllable, i.e., it is defective, it does not receive any structural interpretation, and thus deletes.16 Morphological affixation in IA, as shown in (19), also involves the application of Epenthesis. Rule (21), although it gives the right derivation, ignores one important but simple fact about the motivation of Epenthesis in IA, which is the tendency to create a closed syllable. But one may ask why a closed syllable? To answer this question let us first take (19b) and allow Affect a to apply freely. This can allow Epenthesis to apply after /t/, giving the syllabic configuration (45). (45)

(45) does not violate any of the principles of syllable structure in IA. However, it is not a possible syllabification of (19b). Apparently, the epenthetic vowel in IA triggers the main stress from the preceding 16

Notice that if (44b) is syllabified as *[ki-ta-baw], the initial stressed syllable will be left without a coda. Stressed syllables must be closed in IA; otherwise the derived string is ruled out.

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syllable. Thus, if we assume that the epenthetic vowel is marked as [+L], then (19b) will have the syllabic configuration (46) instead of (45).17

(46)

(46) is ill-formed in that it has an empty [+L] coda position. The consonant /I/ cannot fill this position because it will give a final defective syllable. If Epenthesis is applied between /b/ and /t/ it will give (47).

(47)

(47) then gives an answer to the question raised before about the tendency of IA to have the epenthetic vowel in a closed syllable. This would also explain the difference between CA and IA in the application of Epenthesis without recourse to language particular rules. While IA requires the epenthetic vowel to be stressed, CA does not, and thus the syllabic configuration (45) which is ruled out in IA would be a perfect derivation in CA.

17

Consider also the following example. kitáb+t+1+na→kitabtilne The epenthetic vowel creates a closed syllable, and triggers the main stress from the preceding syllable.

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 209

With this link between syllable structure and stress assignment, Epenthesis in (19a) may give three possible derivations, as in (48). (48) UR: kitab+t+1+na SR: *a. ki-tab-t-lí-na *b. ki-ta-bít-l-na c. ki-tab-ti1-na

The underlying representation of (48) has two stranded consonants. EP in (48a) is ruled out because it creates a stressed open syllable and a stranded consonant. (48b) is also ruled out because it results in a stranded consonant. Notice that in both (a) and (b) it is not possible to license the stranded consonant to the preceding syllable since this creates a non-final superheavy syllable which is not allowed in IA. The only possible application of Epenthesis is (48c) where the syllabic context satisfies the stressed epenthetic vowel. The syllabic structure in TA departs from both CA and IA in that the former requires the marked syllable CVC wherever it is possible to create such a syllable. Consequently, TA, unlike CA and IA, allows a non-final superheavy syllable. The alternation in (12), repeated here as (49), supports our observation about the CVC syllable in TA. It also shows that Syncope in TA plays an important role in the phonology of this variety of Arabic. (49) a. kar-ha-bít-na → b. karh-bít-na "our car"

Syncope is applied in (49b) to eliminate the vowel of the antepenultimate open syllable. Now, if Syncope is applied outside the context of syllabification, it will ignore an important fact about the phonology of TA, i.e., the tendency to create a CVC syllable. But when syncope is applied in geminated roots, it results in degemination. Consider the derivation of the 3MP perfective (50). (50) zawwiz+u —» [zawzu] (*[zawwzu])

The addition of the plural suffix /-u/ creates two final open syllables which is not allowed in TA. Although TA allows a non-final superheavy syllable, as in (49), it reduces the geminate in (50) after

BASIMMAJDI& MILLICENT WINSTON

210

the deletion of /i/, since no consonantal geminate can be tautosyllabic (Schein & Steriade 1986). In Moraic Theory a difference is established between geminates and single consonants. Geminates almost always bear a mora (Hayes 1989:257).18 The example of (50) [zawwiz] will then have the moraic derivation in (51). (51) a.

Adding the agreement suffix to the string in (51) will result in the deletion of the second vowel of the root. It has been argued (Itô 1986) that phonological material must be incorporated into the next higher level of prosodie structure; otherwise it is deleted by Stray Erasure (Steriade 1982). Hayes argues that a natural extension of this principle would state that higher-level phonological elements, such as moras, are also subject to Stray Erasure if they fail to dominate any lower-level element. After the deletion of the second vowel of the root, the moraic representation of the geminate can no longer dominate a lower-level element, and hence it must delete giving the derivation in (b). This would also explain why geminates (moraic underlyingly) simplify, but other consonants in clusters (non-moraic underlyingly, as in (49)) do not delete. The difference between geminates and clusters of single consonants can also be captured within the V-bar theory of syllable structure. When two consonants occupy the coda position, they can be represented as either (52a or b).

18 See also McCarthy and Prince (1990) for the treatment of geminates in the moraic approach.

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 211 (52) a.

If the two elements dominated by C have nondistinctive features (52a), they are interpreted as a single element, i.e., degemination takes place. Degemination can then be interpreted as the nondistinctness of feature representation at C (Majdi & Michaels 1987). But if the two elements dominated by C' have distinctive features (52b), they cannot be merged into a single element. Thus (52a) represents the process of derivation of (50) while (52b) represents that of (49). We also argued before that TA maintains the CVC syllable even if Syncope brings two identical consonants together (see (11)), and thus results in a violation of the OCP. But IA always maintains Antigemination, as shown in the difference between (17a and b). The problem of Antigemination in TA and IA can be properly accounted for if we assume that the application of Syncope is syllableconditioned, and if we follow the logic of markedness theory. Let us take (11a), which exists in the lexicons of both TA and IA, to analyze the behavior of the two languages towards Antigemination. This can be shown in (53). (53) IA: a. msammVm → b. msammVm+a → TA: a. msammVm → b. msammVm+a →

msammim msammima msammim msamma

(M) {V= [+seg, -back]} (F) (M) {V= [useg, uback]} (F)

Since the unspecified vowel in IA never alternates with zero in both the masculine (a) and feminine (b), it must be underlyingly specified as [+seg]. The two forms will have the syllabic configurations (54a and b), respectively.

BASIMMAJDI& MILLICENT WINSTON

212 (54) a.

Notice that in both (a) and (b) the unspecified V is marked [+seg], i.e., it can license the second mora of the geminate as an onset. Further, both (a) and (b) satisfy the syllabic rules in IA. Thus, Antigemination is maintained. In TA, the case is different. If the second vowel of the stem is specified in the lexicon as [+seg] like IA, then the addition of the feminine suffix will create a penultimate open syllable which is not allowed in TA. But if this vowel is underlyingly represented as unmarked for segment (since it alternates with zero in the feminine), then it yields [+seg] for the masculine and [-seg] for the feminine. The TA feminine example of (53) will have the syllabification (55).

(55)

The unspecified vowel has the [-seg] value and thus deletes. The two moras of the geminate are dominated by C in a single syllable structure position, and thus interpreted as a single C. 5. Conclusion There has been a controversy as to whether rules of phonology are better interpreted as pre-syllabic requirements or whether they are motivated by syllable structure. Based on her analysis of CA, Broselow (1979) argues in favor of the former viewpoint in the case of sandhi rules. Based on the analysis of the same data cited in

RULES OF PHONOLOGY: PRE- OR POST-SYLLABLE STRUCTURE? 213

Broselow, and of other data from TA and IA, we show that sandhi rules in the three varieties of Arabic have the same grammatical function. However, if we assume, as in Broselow, that these rules are pre-syllabic requirements, we need to have recourse to language specific rules in each of these varieties, or to impose certain conditions on the same rule to be able to account for the same phenomenon. Since such an analysis will complicate the grammar and miss an important generalization about the function of these rules, we argued in favor of the viewpoint that syllable structure is the proper characterization of the domain of application of sandhi rules. To achieve this objective, we characterized the mechanism of syllabification in TA as having the marked syllable CVC while CA and IA have the unmarked syllable CV when it is unstressed. However, in CA, a restriction on Deletion is applied when the vowel involved is [+low]. We argued that Epenthesis, Syncope, and consequently, Degemination and Antigemination are the automatic outcomes of the interaction between syllable structure and stress. We also argued that the alternations in the stems can better be handled within the markedness theory.

REFERENCES Broselow, Ellen. 1979."Cairene Arabic Syllable Structure". Linguistic Analysis 5:345-382. Cairns, Charles & Mark Feinstein. 1982. "Markedness and the Theory of Syllable Structure". Lingistic Inquiry 13:193-225. Chomsky, Noam & Morris Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row. Hayes, Bruce. 1989. "Compensatory Lengthening in Moraic Phonology". Linguistic Inquir. 20:253-306. Hooper, Joan. 1972. "The Syllable in Phonological Theory". Language 48:525-540. Hyman, Larry. 1985. A Theory of Phonological Weight. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Ito, Junko. 1986. Syllable Theory in Prosodic Phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. . 1989. "A Prosodic Theory of Epenthesis". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7:217-259. Kaisse, Ellen & Patricia Shaw. 1985. "On the Theory of Lexical Phonology". Phonology Yearbook 2:1-30.

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Kiparsky, Paul. 1982. "From Cyclic to Lexical Phonology". The Structure of Phonological Representations ed. by Harry Van der Hulst and Norval Smith, 1:131-175. Dordrecht: Foris. Majdi, Basim. 1988. Iraqi Arabic Morphophonemics. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Majdi, Basim & David Michaels. 1987. "Syllable Structure, Length and Gemination in Iraqi". A paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco. Majdi, Basim & Millicent Winston. 1993. "Gemination and Antigemination in Iraqi Arabic". Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics V ed. by Mushira Eid & Clive Holes, 163-191. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. McCarthy, John. 1979. Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts. . 1986. "OCP Effects: Gemination and Antigemination". Linguistic Inquiry 17:207-263. McCarthy, John & Alan Prince. 1986. "Prosodic Morphology". Manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Brandeis University, Waltham. . 1990. "Prosodic Morphology and Templatic Morphology". Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics II ed. by Mushira Eid & John McCarthy, 1-54. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Michaels, David. 1987. "Syllable Structure and Consonants". Proceedings of the Xlth International Phonetics Congress. Tallinn, Estonia. Michaels, David & Basim Majdi. 1988. "Syllable Structure, Epenthesis and Deletion in Iraqi Arabic". A paper presented at the Sixth International Phonology Meeting, Kerms, Austria. Mohanan, Karuvannur Puthanveettil. 1982. Lexical Phonology. MIT Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Odden, David. 1978. "Aspects of Iraqi Arabic Verbal Phonology". Studies in the Linguistic Science 8. 137-52. Schein, Barry & Donca Steriade. 1986. "On Geminates". Linguistic Inquiry 17:691744. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1981. "Epenthesis and Degenerate Syllables in Cairene Arabic". Theoretical Issues in the Grammar of Semitic Languages ed. by Hagit Borer and Joseph Aoun, 209-232. (= MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 3.) Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Department of Linguistics. . 1982. "The Syllable". The Structure of Phonological Representations Part II ed. by Harry Van der Hulst & Norval Smith, 337-383. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Steriade, Donca. 1982. Greek Prosodies and the Nature of Syllabification. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Wise, Hilary. 1983. "Some Functionally Motivated Rules in Tunisian Arabic". Journal of Linguistics 19:165-181.

ON EMPHASIS AND /r/ IN ARABIC

Munther A. Younes Cornell University

0. Introduction Arabic /r/ patterns with the so-called 'primary emphatic' consonants /t/, /s/, /ð/, /d/, and /z/ in certain phonological processes and with the nonemphatic ones in others. In addition, a number of phonetic and phonological studies of emphasis have shown clear differences between [r], on the one hand, and the primary emphatics, on the other. This has led to conflicting claims about the status of /r/ with respect to emphasis: Is it a primary emphatic, a secondary emphatic, or a nonemphatic consonant that is emphaticized under certain conditions? The goal of this paper is twofold: first, to establish the identity of /r/ within the emphatic system of an Arabic dialect, and second, to find an explanation for the behavior of /r/ as an emphatic in certain cases but as a nonemphatic in others. There are several types of /r/ in Arabic: an alveolar tap, an alveolar trill, a post alveolar approximant, and a velar trill, among others. The most common variants are the alveolar tap and trill, with the latter being the geminate counterpart of the former. These are followed by the velar variants (single and geminate), which characterize certain speech communities, such as the Christians of Baghdad, for example (Abu-Haidar 1992). Other pronunciations (e.g., the approximant) characterize individual speakers rather than speech communities and are considered deviations from the norm. The focus of this paper will be on the tap form of /r/ and its geminate counterpart.

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The paper is organized as follows: section 1 discusses the phenomenon of emphasis in general; section 2 presents a descriptive account of the phonological behavior of /r/ in Arabic with respect to emphasis with a focus on a Palestinian Arabic dialect; section 3 compares and contrasts the phonetic properties of /r/ with those of the primary emphatics; section 4 offers an account of /r/ based on the phonological and phonetic facts presented in the previous two sections; and section 5 concludes the paper. 1. Emphasis Emphasis is generally defined as a secondary articulation involving the back of the tongue, which accompanies a primary articulation at another point in the vocal tract (Obrecht 1968; Al-Ani 1970; Ghazeli 1977; Herzallah 1990, among others). A number of different terms have been employed to refer to this phenomenon. In addition to 'emphasis', which is a translation of the Arabic term tafxim, the terms 'velarization', 'backing', and 'pharyngealization' have been widely used. The term 'dorsalization' has recently appeared, which, together with pharyngealization, is argued to distinguish emphatic consonants from their nonemphatic counterparts in Arabic (Herzallah 1990). However, I will follow the common practice of referring to the phenomenon as emphasis except when technical distinctions need to be made among members of the emphatic group. Examples of emphatic/nonemphatic contrasts in Arabic are shown in (1). (Emphatic consonants are marked by a dot underneath.) (1) tiin tææb seef Oæmm

"figs" "he repented" "sword" "he put down"

tiin taab seef Samm

"mud" "to become well" "summer" "he annexed"

Linguists have traditionally distinguished between the primary emphatics /t/, /s/, /S/, /d/, and /z/ and a number of other consonants generally referred to as secondary emphatics which, according to most accounts, include /r/, /l/, /m/ and /b/ (Blanc 1953; Mitchell 1956; Harrel 1957; Erwin 1963; Cowell 1964; Broselow 1976; Ghazeli 1977). The primary emphatics are distinguished from the secondary emphatics in three major respects. First, they contrast with a set of

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nonemphatic phonemes. Second, emphatic/nonemphatic contrasts involving the primary emphatics are found in all vocalic environments, whereas contrasts involving the secondary emphatics are found only next to low vowels. This characteristic of the secondary emphatics always raises the question of whether emphatic/nonemphatic contrasts involving them may be the result of a low vowel contrast. Third, except for /r/, the secondary emphatics are found in only a handful of forms, mostly borrowings from foreign languages. The status of the primary emphatics as emphatic phonemes is generally not in question: linguists are in agreement concerning the classification of /t/, /s/, /d/, / ð / and / z / as emphatic. However, significant differences are observed in the treatment of the secondary emphatics, with different linguists adding one, two, or more to the list of emphatic phonemes. For example, while Mitchell (1956) adds only (r) to the list in Egyptian Arabic, Broselow (1976) adds both /r/ and /i/, and Harrell (1957) /r/, /l/, /m/, /b/, and /k/. Erwin's (1963) list of emphatic phonemes in Iraqi includes /l/, /m/, /b/, /p/, and /f/ in addition to the primary emphatics; Cowell's (1964) list includes /r/, /i/, /m/, /b/, /p/, and /n/ in Syrian; and Blanc's (1953) includes /i/, /m/, /b/ in North Palestinian Arabic. In addition, Ferguson (1957) argues for including /i/ with the group of emphatic phonemes in Arabic. In his acoustic/cinefluorographic study of emphasis in a number of different Arabic dialects Ghazeli (1977) concludes that only the primary emphatics /t/, /s/, /d/, and /ð/ share a similar set of phonetic properties that are associated with emphasis (see section 3 below). None of the secondary emphatics shares all these properties. A similar conclusion was reached by Card (1983) in her study of emphasis in Palestinian Arabic. Younes (1982) and Herzallah (1990), which examine emphasis in Palestinian Arabic from a phonological perspective, confirm the classification of the primary emphatics /t/, /s/, /d/, /ð/, and /z/ as a group distinct from the secondary emphatics, with the exception of /r/, as will be shown below. In addition to having the widest occurrence among the secondary emphatics, /r/ is the only member of this group that involves systematic alternations as a function of the phonological environment. For these two reasons /r/, rather than any of the other secondary emphatics, was chosen for this study.

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2. Emphasis-Related Phenomena Involving Irl I will use my dialect of Palestinian Arabic, which I will refer to as rural Palestinian Arabic (RPA), 1 to illustrate the phonological behavior of /r/ with respect to emphasis. This will be followed by a brief discussion of the same phenomenon in other varieties of Arabic with which I am familiar and for which data are available. 2.1 Irl behaving as an emphatic With the exception of certain well-defined phonological environments, /r/ generally patterns with the primary emphatics /t/ /s/, /ð/, and /z/ as shown in the following areas of RPA phonology and morphology (Younes 1982). First, it is generally accompanied by the back variant of the low vowels, one of the main signals of emphasis. Compare the following pairs of words: (2)

baas tall'

"bus" "he appeared"

bææs tæll

"he kissed" "hill"

barad naar jaar

"he got cold" "fire" "neighbor"

bælæd nææm jææb

"country" "he slept" "he brought"

Second, it spreads emphasis to other segments. Generally, emphasis spreads from an emphatic source (i.e., the primary emphatics and /r/) to all segments to the left in the same uninfected word and to the first vowel to the right (Younes 1993):2 x The consonant and vowel phonemes of this dialect are shown in a table in the Appendix. 2 This is an oversimplified statement of the rules of emphasis spread. A number of exceptions exist. In addition, some differences are observed in emphasis spread between /r/ on the one hand and the primary emphatics on the other, which involve morpheme boundaries. For example, a coronal consonant that is part of a suffix blocks emphasis spread to therightof [r] but not to therightof other emphatics:

kabað+na kabað+tak kabað+ha xallas+naa+h

"he caught us" "I caught you" "he caught her" "we finished it"

hasar+næ

"he cornered us"

ON EMPHASIS AND /r/ IN ARABIC

(3)

xabat xabar patlaan xarbaan

219

"he struck" "news item" "not functioning'' "broken down"

Third, /r/ behaves like the primary emphatics and the velar consonants /k/, /x/, and /γ/ with respect to a morphological rule of ablaut. According to this rule, a non-derived verb in the imperfect has i as its stem vowel if its corresponding perfect form has a as its stem vowel and vice versa: (4)

kætæb xæbæz

yiktib yixbiz

"he wrote, he writes" "he baked, he bakes"

jimid kibil

yijmæd yikbæl

"it froze, it freezes" "he accepted, he accepts"

Certain verbs with a low vowel in the perfect show u instead of i in the imperfect. These verbs are generally characterized by having a primary emphatic, a velar consonant, or /r/ as one of their root consonants, particularly in the second or third position of the triconsonantal root: (5)

xabat nas ab nafaÔ nækæl næyæz næfæx

yixbut yinsub yinfuÖ yinkul yinyuz yinfux

"he struck, he strikes" "he set up, he sets up" "he shook, he shakes" "he transported, he transports" "he pricked, he pricks' "he blew, he blows"

fiæmæl jamap

yifimil yijmaS

"he carried, he carries" "he collected, he collects"

barad fiaraθ pabar

yibrud yifiruθ yipbur

"he became cold, he becomes cold': "he plowed, he plows" "he entered, he enters"

hašar+tæk

"I cornered you"

For a detailed discussion, the reader is referred to Younes (1993).

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Fourth, except in cases when the preceding vowel is nonlow and front (see 2.2 below), /r/ patterns with the primary emphatics in the selection of the different allomorphs of the nominal feminine singular suffix. This suffix is realized in two different ways depending on the identity of the preceding cononant. If this consonant is a primary emphatic, a velar, a pharyngeal, laryngeal, or emphatic [r], then the suffix is realized as a short low vowel [a] or [æ]; otherwise it is realized as a high front vowel /i/. This is shown in (6). "simple" "wide" "watch" "dizzy" "piece of paper" "good" "neighbor" "cactus" "jacket" "hole, pit" "crazy" "tall" "school" "big" "peel"

2.2/r/ behaving as a nonemphatic A major phonological difference between /r/ and the primary emphatics is the de-emphasis of the former in certain environments and its consequent behavior as a nonemphatic. These environments include the following: (a) in the neighborhood of a noninflectional, nonepenthetic, nonlow front vowel. ( 7 ) '

" y "yesterday" "lambs" "barrel" "other than you"

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221

Compare with, (8)

jaarič harib ruraf

"your (FS) neighbor" (i is part of the possessive suffix) "war" (i is epenthetic) "rooms"

(b) immediately before nonemphatic coronal consonants (0, ð, t, d, s, z, n, š , c, J, y) in the same stem. (9)

bærdææn dærsæk pærnæb færsææt

"cold" "your lesson" "rabbit" "mattresses"

(c) /r/ is de-emphaticized, along with /s/ and /ð/, but not l\l before a velar (x, y> k) in the same root.3 The clearest indication of a deemphaticized segment is the occurrence of front low vowels adjacent to it. (If /r/ is within the range of emphasis spread, then it is not deemphaticized as shown by words like pariið"wide", parxas "cheaper".) (10)

tærræx bæryæš rææfæk sædæk ðæyyæk særæx sæbæy

"he dated" "mosquitos" "he befriended" "he told the truth,: "he made narrow' "he shouted" "he dyed"

2.3 Comparison with other accounts of /r/ in Arabic Other phonological accounts of Arabic /r/ do not differ significantly from the account given above. Earlier descriptions of /r/ by the Arab grammarians of the Middle Ages (Cantineau 1960:48-50; Cohen 1969:61) identified two types of /r/: mufaxxama "emphatic" and muraqqaqa "nonemphatic". Emphatic [r] is found in the neighborhood of the vowels [back] /a/ and /u/, and the mustaïliya 3

A more accurate way to describe this phenomenon may be to state that emphatic [r], /s/ and /$/ are not found before the velars in the same root. Note that no examples could be given in which /z/ occurs before a velar because it is found only in a few words in this dialect.

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consonants, i.e., those consonants that involve raising the back of the tongue, (/t/, /s/, /ð/, /d/, /q/, /x/, and /γ/), and nonemphatic [r] is found mostly next to /i/ and /y/. Blanc (1953:63-65), in his account of /r/ in North Palestinian Arabic, describes a distribution that is similar to that described by the Arab grammarians. According to Harrel (1957:72-74) emphatic/nonemphatic /r/ contrasts in Egyptian Arabic generally involve [a]/[æ] contrasts as well, with emphatic [r] occurring next to back low vowels and nonemphatic [r] next to front ones. Broselow (1976:xiv) identifies two variants of r in Egyptian Arabic but she lists them as different phonemes. Shaaban (1977), quoted in Ghazeli (1977:158), describes a distribution of the two allophones of /r/ before the nonemphatic coronals in Omani Arabic that is similar to the one described for RPA. Al-Mozainy (1981: Chapters II and V) identifies two allophones of/r/ in Bedouin Hijazi Arabic and considers the nonemphatic allophone as the primary one and the emphatic one derived in certain environments, generally in the neighborhood of back segments. Heath (1987:297-302) describes a distribution of two /r/ allophones in Moroccan Arabic that is similar to the one described for other dialects, namely [r] next to high, front vowels and [r] elsewhere, although he suggests that an /r/-/r/ phonemic split is gradually replacing the allophonic variation [298]. Herzallah (1990), who studied a dialect of Palestinian Arabic closely related to RPA, gives an almost identical account of the distribution of the two variants of /r/ in that dialect and considers the emphatic allophone as the primary one. 2.4 Summary In summary, then, /r/ is similar to the primary emphatics in the following areas: (a) association with low back vowels, (b) spreading emphasis to other segments, (c) being accompanied by /u/ instead of /i/ in the perfect/imperfect ablaut rule (together with the primary emphatics and the velars /k/, /x/, /y/), (d) being accompanied by /a/ in the selection of the feminine suffix allomorph selection: together with the primary emphatics, the velars, the pharyngeals and laryngeals.

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It is different from the primary emphatics in the following respects: (a) emphasis spread from it is more limited, (b) it is more vulnerable to influence from neighboring segments, (c) emphatic/nonemphatic contrasts involving it also involve low vowel contrasts; there are no ru/ru, re/re, etc. contrasts. 3. The Phonetics of /r/ In spite of the patterning of /r/ with the primary emphatics described above, phonetic studies have shown systematic differences between emphatic [r], on the one hand, and the primary emphatics, on the other (Obrecht 1968; Al-Ani 1970; Ghazeli 1977; Card 1983). These differences can be summarized in terms of length, tongue shape, vulnerability to influence from neighboring segments, and dependence on such segments for identification. 3.1 Length One noticeable feature of /r/ in both its emphatic and nonemphatic forms is its extremely short duration. The following table shows the average duration of emphatic [r] and nonemphatic [r] as well as the duration of [ð], [t], and their nonemphatic counterparts [ð] and [t] for comparison. (11)

[r] [r] [t] [t] [5] [Ö]

barad wæræk šatab xætæm faSah hæOæf

"he became cold" "paper" "he crossed out" "he stamped" "he exposed" "he deleted"

16 milliseconds (msec.) 16 msec, 75 msec, 78 msec. 43 msec. 51msec.

Figure 1 shows spectrograms of the words [barad], [šatab], and [faðah] for illustration. The target consonant is underlined in each word.

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Figure 1: Spectrograms of the words barad,Šatab,and faðah

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Obrecht (1968) and Al-Ani (1970) have made similar observations regarding the duration of [r] in Lebanese Arabic and Modem Standard Arabic, respectively. 3.2. Tongue shape In his study of emphasis in Arabic, Ghazeli (1977) presents cinefluorographic evidence which shows differences in tongue shape between [r], on the one hand, and the primary emphatics on the other. He claims, on the basis of that evidence, that during the articulation of [r] the tongue has a "camel's back shape" which is not visible in the primary emphatics [t, s, ð], where "the tongue is more smoothly shaped" [163]. A cinefluorograph showing both [t] and [r] is given (on page 164) to confirm Ghazeli's conclusion. The cinefluorograph, reproduced here as Figure 2 shows the "camel's back shape" of [r] and also more retraction of the tongue dorsum towards the upper back wall of the pharynx in the case of [t] than [r]. Figure 2: Tongue shape during the articulation of [r] and [t] in the words rbiica "his ; [t; ), Ghazeli (1977:164). spring" and tbiica "nature" (r:

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However, a comparison of all the primary emphatics for which cinefluorographs are shown with their nonemphatic counterparts, emphatic [r] with nonemphatic [r], and the primary emphatics with [r] shows one systematic difference between [r] and [r], on the one hand, and the primary emphatics and their nonemphatic counterparts, on the other: during the articulation of the primary emphatics die center of the tongue (the part of the tongue beneath the hard palate and part of the soft palate) is consistently lower than in the nonemphatics. This does not seem to happen in the case of [r] as opposed to [r]. Figure 3, taken from Ghazeli (1977:69-70, 165) illustrates this. (No cinefluorographs are given contrasting [ð] and [ð], which were also examined by Ghazeli.)

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Figure 3: Vocal tract shape during the articulation of the emphatic/nonemphatic pairs: t /t —, s /s —, and r —/r .

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In conclusion, [r] shares certain features of tongue shape with the primary emphatics, in particular pulling the tongue dorsum towards the upper back wall of the pharynx, but it differs from them in the absence of lowering of the center of the tongue. 3.3 Vulnerability to influence from neighboring segments In his description of /r/ in Modern Standard Arabic, Al-Ani (1970:76) found it difficult to measure the formant frequency of the trill because it has formants that glide into the preceding and following vowel formants. Ghazeli (1977:155) reports that /r/ in the six Arabic dialects he investigated "can be backed by any segment that requires a posterior articulation. Card (1983:53) found that the F2 values for [r] in the Palestinian Arabic dialect she studied change "according to adjacent vowels".4 3.4 Dependence on neighboring segments for its identification In his study of the perception of emphasis by Lebanese Arabic speakers, Obrecht (1968) concludes that linguistic information necessary for the identification of /r/ as emphatic or nonemphatic is normally carried by neighboring sounds. He states [27] that [r] is "identical in all respects to [r]" with the contrasts between the two usually "detected from the alternation of the neighboring vowels." He also notes that "no reasonably handled F2 transition was sufficient to clue the perception of velarization in connection with [r]" and that it was "impossible to gain /r/ versus [r] discrimination on the basis of transitons alone, unless-as in the case of the l's-the transitions were to be so elongated as to be in effect steady-state vowels [38]." 4. Discussion I would like to argue on the basis of the phonological and phonetic facts presented above that: (a) [r] shares some but not all the features that distinguish the primary emphatics from their nonemphatic counterparts; (b) the features it shares with the primary emphatics include a configuration that favors back low as opposed to front low vowels; (c) association with back low vowels is interpreted by native 4

This does not seem to be a peculiarity of Arabic; for instance, Recasens (1991:274) observed similar facts about [r] in Catalan where he reports "higher F2 frequencies for taps and trills when adjacent to the front as opposed to the back vowels".

ON EMPHASIS AND /r/ IN ARABIC

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speakers as a signal of emphasis; and (d) because of [r]'s vulnerability to influence from neighboring segments, it is de-emphaticized in certain contexts. The correspondence in vocal tract configuration between [r] on the one hand and the primary emphatics on the other, particularly the backing of the tongue dorsum, does not necessarily imply classifying [r] as a primary emphatic. A similar vocal tract configuration is observed in other languages with no emphatic/nonemphatic contrasts of the t/t, etc. type. For example, in his discussion of the articulation of taps and trills in Catalan, Recasens (1991:274) states that "it appears that the multiple vibrations of the trill are easier to produce if. . .the postdorsum [is] retracted towards the soft palate and/or the rear wall of the upper pharynx." Furthermore, in spite of the differences between retroflex [r] and tap/trill [r], the American English retroflex [r] is reported to involve a back articulation similar to the one observed in Arabic and Catalan. In their study of [r] in English, Delattre & Freeman (1968:45) state that differences between American and British English in the pronunciation of postvocalic [r] as in the word curb include the following ". . .(b) they [American [r]'s] form a primary constriction by raising the mid-dorsum or the blade of the tongue (not the appex) toward the palato-velar arch; (c) they form a secondary constriction by withdrawing the root of the tongue toward the pharyngeal wall."5

5

The complex articulation of [r] may be used to explain synchronic alternations and diachronic changes involving different languages and different types of /r/. For example, in an attempt to explain the diversity of /r/-types in Modern English and the different diachronic processes in which /r/ was involved such as diphthongization, retraction, raising, lowering, rounding, etc., Lass (1983:82) posits a upharyngealized velar approximant...as the most likely candidate for the 'primitive type' of English /r/". The pronunciation of /r/ in some Arabic dialects and idiolects as velar or uvular may be viewed as an instance of the loss of the primary alveolar articulation while the secondary articulation is retained. (See McCarthy (1989) for cases of loss of a primary articulation and retention of a secondary (back) articulation in some Semitic languages.) A similar explanation may also be suggested for alveolar/uvular /r/ alternations in Swedish reported by Lindau (1985:166) who states that "in some areas of Sweden that are on the border between tongue tip r's and uvular r's...members of the same family may use either front or back r-sounds, and other family members never notice the difference." The changes of tongue-tip trills to uvular trills that occurred in French, German, and Southern Swedish, also reported by Lindau (1985:166) may be explained along the same lines.

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The configuration of [r] described above, in which the tongue dorsum is pulled back, as well as the configuration of the primary emphatics, naturally favors back as opposed to front vowels, since front vowels involve an articulatory gesture that is contradictory to dorsum backing. So in Arabic, where no front/back phonemic contrast in low vowels exists, this implies favoring the back allophones of these vowels. This, as was pointed above, is consistently the case in the neighborhood of the primary emphatics and [r]. 6 Since the primary emphatics are invariably accompanied by the back variant of the low vowel, it is reasonable to conclude that for native speakers the presence of back low vowels in the neighborhood of certain consonants is taken as a signal that such consonants are emphatic. An examination of foreign borrowings supports this conclusion: a consonant that is adjacent to a low back vowel in a foreign word that is borrowed into Arabic is frequently interpreted as emphatic, and is pronounced and written as such. A few examples are shown in (12). (12)

tarasanta baas qaysar bataata baritaanya pitaalya

"name of a private school" (from terra santa) "bus" "Caesar, kaiser" "potatoes" "Britain" "Italy"

Associating emphasis with low back vowels may be used to explain the phenomenon of secondary emphasis in cases involving /b/, /m/, and /1/. As was mentioned in section 1, the secondary emphatics are invariably accompanied by low back vowels and, with the exception of /r/, are almost exclusively foreign borrowings. It is possible to argue that secondary emphasis is no more than an association with a low back vowel whose presence in a word is perceived as a signal of emphasis. 6

This may also explain a/æ alternations in English words involving a low vowel followed by /r/. Compare, for instance, the following pairs of words: car cat bar back jar jam

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4.1 De-emphasis The secondary backing articulation of [r], i.e., backing the tongue dorsum toward the upper wall of the pharynx, is maintained as long as there is no conflicting gesture, such as the gestures involved in the production of the high front vowels and the nonemphatic coronal consonants. So de-emphasis can be viewed as loss of the secondary backing articulation; the tongue is fronted by front vowels and nonemphatic coronals whose articulation involves a fronting gesture.7 The vulnerability of [r] to de-emphaticiation in contrast with the primary emphatics may be due to inherent phonetic differences between the two groups such as difference in length, mentioned in section 3.8 Whereas de-emphasis of [r] in the neighborhood of high front vowels and nonemphatic coronal consonants makes phonetic sense, another type of de-emphasis involving [r] does not. It is de-emphasis of the fricative emphatics [s] and [ð] in addition to [r] before the velar consonants /x/, /γ/, and /k/ in the same root (see section 2.2). Unlike front nonlow vowels and coronal nonemphatic consonants, the velars do not involve a forward movement of the tongue. An explanation for this de-emphasis rule may be found in an examination of relevant historical and comparative data. There is evidence that this type of de-emphasis is a diachronic rather than a synchronic process. For example, there are no emphatic/nonemphatic alternations involved that are similar to [r]/[r] alternations as a function of neighboring sounds: if a /s/ is deemphaticized in a certain root, all derivatives of that root will have a de-emphaticized /s/, and the only evidence for assuming a derivation from an emphatic source is either comparative or historical. 5. Conclusion

7

A similar situation is reported by Recasens (1991:274) for Catalan, where he states that "adjacent high [front] vowels cause tongue dorsum raising and fronting". 8 A functional explanation may be proposed which would account for the vulnerabiltiy of [r] to change on the basis that no r/r phonemic contrast exists in the language as in the case of the primaryt emphatics. Such an explanation is impossible to prove (or disprove) based on the data available.

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In conclusion, emphasis in Arabic /r/ is of a different nature phonetically from emphasis in the primary emphatic consonants, and is closely associated with backing in low vowels. It is not radically different from the backing observed in low vowels adjacent to /r/ in other languages. Arabic /r/ by nature requires a back articulation. Of the two low vowel allophones available in the language, the back one is selected to accompany /r/ because of similarity in articulatory requirements and because the two variants of the low vowel are not phonemically contrastive. However, since back low vowels are associated with emphasis at the phonological level, /r/ is grouped with the primary emphatics in certain phonological and morphological processes such as emphasis spread, perfect/imperfect ablaut alternations, and the distribution of the feminine suffix allomorphs. But /r/'s behavior at the phonological and morphological levels does not change its basic phonetic characteristics—the fact that it is a short tap or a series of short taps whose identity is dependent on adjacent segments and which is vulnerable to influence from neighboring segments. Thus it is fronted by nonlow front vowels and nonemphatic coronal consonants, which is reflected phonologically in an association with front low vowels. Because of these properties, /r/ should be placed in a group by itself that is phonetically and phonologically distinct (in terms of its classificaiton with respect to the phenomenon of emphasis) from the primary emphatics and the rest of the Arabic consonants.

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Appendix The phonemes of rural Palestinian Arabic Consonants Affricate vd vss

Nasal Lateral

Trill/Tap

m

Semi-vowel

w

ð ðθ t d

t k ?

z z

s s

Y p

š x h h

n >