Rewriting Dialectal Arabic Prehistory

Rewriting Dialectal Arabic Prehistory PDF Author: Alexander Borg
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004472134
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
This study is the first attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of Arabic by examining lexical evidence of its symbiotic relationship with Ancient Egyptian already apparent from the Pyramid Texts (c. 2613–2181 BC). It documents the contention that Ancient Egypt was a strategic site in its early prehistory.

Rewriting Dialectal Arabic Prehistory

Rewriting Dialectal Arabic Prehistory PDF Author: Alexander Borg
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004472134
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
This study is the first attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of Arabic by examining lexical evidence of its symbiotic relationship with Ancient Egyptian already apparent from the Pyramid Texts (c. 2613–2181 BC). It documents the contention that Ancient Egypt was a strategic site in its early prehistory.

Communal Dialects in Baghdad

Communal Dialects in Baghdad PDF Author: Haim Blanc
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004689885
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Haim Blanc’s Communal Dialects in Baghdad is one of the most influential works ever written on the on the linguistic diachrony of vernacular Arabic. Based on original fieldwork conducted during the years 1957–1962, this book portaits the extensive regional continuum of modern spoken Arabic stretching across parts of Mesopotamia and N. Syria, evinced by the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian speech communities in Baghdad. Typos and other mistakes have been corrected in this reprint, which is accompanied by an Editorial Preamble by Alexander Borg and a Foreword by Paul Wexler, and contains references to the original page numbers.

The IOS Annual Volume 21. “Carrying a Torch to Distant Mountains”

The IOS Annual Volume 21. “Carrying a Torch to Distant Mountains” PDF Author: Yoram Cohen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004499148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
The IOS Annual Volume 21. “Carrying a Torch to Distant Mountains” brings forth cutting-edge studies devoted to a wide array of fields and disciplines of the Middle East, from the beginning of civilization to modern times.

Arabic and the Case against Linearity in Historical Linguistics

Arabic and the Case against Linearity in Historical Linguistics PDF Author: Jonathan Owens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192693174
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
This book explores the long history of the Arabic language, from pre-Islamic Arabic via the Classical era of the Arabic grammarians up to the present day. While most traditional accounts have been dominated by a linear understanding of the development of Arabic, this book instead advocates a multiple pathways approach to Arabic language history. Arabic has multifarious sources: its relations to other Semitic languages, an old epigraphic and papyrological tradition, a vibrant and linguistically original classical Arabic linguistic tradition, and a widely dispersed array of contemporary spoken varieties. These diverse sources present a challenge to and an opportunity for defining a holistic but not necessarily linear Arabic language history. The geographical breadth and chronological depth of Arabic make it a fertile ground for a critical appraisal and application of perspectives from a range of subdisciplines including sociolinguistics, typology, grammaticalization, and corpus linguistics. Jonathan Owens draws on these approaches to investigate more than 20 individual case studies that cover more than 1500 years of documented and reconstructed history: the results demonstrate that Arabic is a far more complex historical object than traditional accounts have assumed. This complexity is further explored in a comparison of the historical morphology of three languages that can be compared over roughly the same period (500 AD-2022 AD): Icelandic, English, and Arabic. Icelandic and English are diametrically opposed on a parameter of linearity. Icelandic is effectively alinear: the morphology of the earliest Icelandic writings is the morphology of today. English is linear, having undergone a drastic change in morphology from its Old English stage to the Middle English period. Arabic is shown to be alinear in many important respects, but multilinear in others, with different sorts of linguistic changes being spread across many individual historical speech communities.

Language Contact in Ancient Egypt

Language Contact in Ancient Egypt PDF Author: Thomas Schneider
Publisher: LIT Verlag
ISBN: 3643965079
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the field of language contact and multilingualism in ancient Egypt before the Greco-Roman period (4th millennium BCE–4th c. BCE). It gives a survey of the historical evidence of linguistic interference of Egyptian with languages in Africa, the Near East and the Mediterranean, discusses the different attested phenomena of language contact and offers a case study of foreign language communities in ancient Egypt. Detailed indexes makes this book a rich source of linguistic information for general linguistics and neighboring disciplines.

Space and Time in aṣ-Ṣāniʿ Arabic

Space and Time in aṣ-Ṣāniʿ Arabic PDF Author: Letizia Cerqueglini
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004511121
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
This work contributes to the discussion on the relationship between space and time in language and cognition and the role of culture in this relationship from the perspective of the dialect of aṣ-Ṣāniʿ, a Bedouin Arab tribe of the Negev (Israel).

The IOS Annual Volume 22: “Telling of Olden Kings”

The IOS Annual Volume 22: “Telling of Olden Kings” PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900452679X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The IOS Annual volume 22: “Telling of Olden Kings” brings forth cutting-edge studies devoted to a wide array fields and disciplines of the Middle East, from the beginning of civilization to modern times.

Arabic Dialectology

Arabic Dialectology PDF Author: Enam al- Wer
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004172122
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Much of the insight in the field of Arabic linguistics has for a long time remained unknown to linguists outside the field. Regrettably, Arabic data rarely feature in the formulation of theories and analytical tools in modern linguistics. This situation is unfavourable to both sides. The Arabist, once an outrider, has almost become a non-member of the mainstream linguistics community. Consequently, linguistics itself has been deprived of a wealth of data from one of the world's major languages. However, it is reassuring to witness advances being made to integrate into mainstream linguistics the visions and debates of specialists in Arabic. Building on this fruitful endeavour, this book presents thought-provoking, new articles, especially written for this collection by leading scholars from both sides. The authors discuss topics in historical, social and spatial dialectology focusing on Arabic data investigated within modern analytical frameworks.

Approaches to Arabic Dialects

Approaches to Arabic Dialects PDF Author: Martine Haak
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047402480
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
This volume brings together 22 contributions to the study of Arabic dialects, from the Maghreb to Iraq by authors, who are all well-known for their work in this field. It underscores the importance of different theoretical approaches to the study of dialects, developing new frameworks for the study of variation and change in the dialects, while presenting new data on dialects (e.g., of Jaffa, Southern Sinai, Nigeria, South Morocco and Mosul) and cross-dialectal comparisons (e.g., on the feminine gender and on relative clauses). This collection is presented to Manfred Woidich, one of the most eminent scholars in the field of Arabic dialectology.

Origin of “Semitic” Languages

Origin of “Semitic” Languages PDF Author: Adel S. Bishtawi
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1481798979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
From the author of the Origins of Arabic Numerals—a Natural History of Numbers, an AuthorHouse publication, and Natural Foundations of Arab Civilisation—Origins of Alphabets, Numeration, Numerals, Measurements, Weights, Litigation, and Money . . . Book of Origins Part II (in Arabic) Origin of Semitic Languages Introductory Etymological Study of the Prehistoric Ancestral Linguistic Nuclei and Monosyllables of Semitic Languages Primarily Based on Akkadian and Southern and Northern Arabic Adel S. Bishtawi The unity of what is traditionally called Semitic languages may be traced in the roots, in the inflections, and in the general features of the syntax. Almost a thousand years before the publication in 1781 of Repertorium fuer biblische und morgenlaendische Literatur, linguists studying certain features of Canaanite (Phoenician), Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic (?abaši) noted the interrelationship of these languages. Other studies pointed to a prehistoric ancestral origin for these and more than sixty other languages, first named Ursemitische and later Proto-Semitic. Research involving the history of the Arabic numerals established their prehistoric origin and confirmed a linguistic link between small numbers and small words. The scope and depth of the multilayered research were expanded in an attempt to identify the origin of Semitic languages and, probably, the origin of languages. It took more than two years to realise that the pioneering linguists of Arabic were not aware of the main building blocks of the language they treated and that the smaller biconsonantals, not triconsonantals as is widely believed, were the original roots of the Semitic languages. At one time in the remotest horizon of their history, the language consisted of a very limited number biconsonantals and monosyllabic root morphemes. Words expressing the basic needs of primitive man, such as water, food, hut, stone, danger, etc., could be several thousand years older than the oldest attested Semitic language (i.e., Akkadian) or several tens of thousands. Akkadian, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Arabic are formidable communicate tools, yet their biconsonantal roots, or linguistic nuclei, were found to be surprisingly small. Four hundred and thirty roots were identified in two categories, primaries and secondaries. Most are paired in units constituting the main body in the larger linguistic clusters, tens of which were listed and discussed in the Origin of Semitic Languages. With what could be the greatest linguistic secret in history now unveiled, other important surprises may follow. With careful etymological analysis of linguistic nuclei, many of which were adapted or borrowed from animals and ancient environment, the true origin of scores of biblical names and ancient locations can be more correctly identified. Moreover, new windows can be opened on the various aspects of early societies to provide what appears to be a sufficiently clear picture of the first steps on the long road to civilisation and, probably, human consciousness.