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BY
HAIM BLANC
~
.
D ISTRIBUTED FOR THE
FOREWORD
This study is the result of research carried on in Israel and in the
United States between 1957 and 1962. I had the good fortune of being
able to devote the years 1958- 1960 almost entirely to this project
under a research fellowship of the Center for Middle Eastern Stud ies,
and wish to express my indebtedness to Prof. H. A. R. G ibb, to D. W.
Lockard and to the staff of the Center fo r the cord ial reception and
generous help accorded me. I am also indebted to my chairma n,
Prof. H. J. Polotsky, for releasing me from my duties at the Linguist ics
Department of the H'ebrew Un ive rsity and for his inc isive comme nts
on various parts of thi s work. Special thanks are due C.A. Ferguson,
who was in strum en tal in getting me to the Center, follo wed thi s wo rk
in its various stages, and gave the typesc ript a th orough go ing-over.
."
--
have been omitted. Those who have kept their Iraqi nationality must,
I th ink , remain anonymous; these include all my Mus lim and mos t
vi
old friend and teacher A. J. Chaurize for several useful hints, including
some on his native Siirt dialect ; Mrs. R. Shamash and her relatives
(Carmac, Siverek), A. Zakay (Mosul) ; S. Khalil (Hit); A. Haskel
(Basra); H. Kohen (Amara). Most of my information on Jewish
Baghdadi comes from a good friend , A. Loya, and from the persons
whose acquaintance I made through him: his wife Gladys, his sisters
Bunayya and Naomi, his friend s Reuben and Ruth Khazzam (the
latter from Basra) and Miss E. Cohen. It is, in fact, to A. Loya's
vast knowledge and keen insight that lowe some of my basic notions
as to the structures and interrelations of the dialects studied.
H.B.
Jerusalem
April 1963
c..:
u..
c:::;
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
Aim and Scope .
Sources .
Baghdad
Other Dialects.
.
The Mesopotamian Dialect Area
Overall view. The qeltu-gelet Split
.
Main Contrastive Features o f the qeltu-gefet Split.
The Baghdad Situation
.
.
Majority and Minorities: Some Figures
Correlation between Community and Dialect
Degree of Uniformity with in Each Dialect
Communal Dialects in the Rest of Iraq .
Affinities with Other Dialects
3
3
3
4
5
5
7
8
8
9
9
10
10
12
12
12
13
3. PHONOLOGY
Procedure and Notation
Consonants .
Overall View
.'
Reflexes of the OA Interdenta ls .
Reflexes of OA/I l
Reflexes of OA/rl
Reflexes of OA/kl
Reflexes of OA/ql
Vowels .
Overall View.
.
Reflexes of OAlil and lui
Reflexes of OAlal .
Reflexes of OA/i and luI
Reflexes of OA final la'l
The 'imlila.
Reflexes of OA/ayl and lawl
Stress
..
Consonant Clusters and Anaptyxi s.
17
17
17
17
19
19
13
13
14
15
16
20
25
26
30
30
35
38
41
41
42
50
52
~3
vii
"
CONTENTS
viii
Overall View
53
~O=
4. MORPHOLOGY
57
,
.
.
Indirect and Double Object Pronouns
The Femin ine Suffix
Overall View.
.
.
AJlomorphs in the Isolated Noun
AlJomorphs in Sandhi
Unit Nouns
Some Ot her Suffixes
The Sound Plural Suffixes
Relational and Agent Suffixes
Hypocoristic Suffixes
The Noun
Overall View
Irregular Patterns
Regular Patterns
The Nu merals
The Cardinal Numbers
The Ordinals
The Part iciple
Fo rm I Participles .
Participles of Forms II and III
Other Participles
The Verb
Overall View
Form I
'"
.
.
Forms lI , IIf , V. and vr, and Quadriconsonantal Verbs
Form IV
Form VII .
Form VIII.
Form IX
Form X
Verb Modifiers.
Olher Morpheme Classes .
Determination Markers.
The Relative L'
.
.
.
ReOexes of OA/Ii / and /, ila/ .
Some Prepositions
57
57
59
59
59
64
66
68
68
68
71
72
73
73
74
74
74
74
75
75
90
90
93
93
93
94
96
97
97
97
108
III
III
113
114
115
115
11 8
11 8
120
120
121
124
124
124
124
125
125
ix
125
126
128
128
131
133
133
133
134
135
136
136
136
138
140
140
140
145
160
160
160
162
164
165
166
166
166
167
168
172
REFERENCES CITED
173
NOTES.
18 1
BY
HAIM BLANC
I
D ISTRIBUTED FOR THE
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSElTS
1964
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INTROD UCTION
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00
V)
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.!;
Ul
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~
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LI AIM AND SCOPE. The present monograph attempts to describe the linguistic situation that obtains among the Arabic-speaking
populations of Baghdad and other towns of Lower Iraq .1 Though
detailed research was done for Baghdad o nly, the evidence indicates
that a wholly a na logo us situation ex ists in the other communally
mi xed urban centers of Lower Iraq. The basic feature of this situation
is the unusually profound and sharply delineated dialecta l cleavage
that divides these populations into three non regional dialect groups,
corresponding to the three major rel igious communities, namely
the Muslims, the Jews, and the Christians. Laconic statements on the
existence of this trichotomy may lie fou nd here and th ere in the
literature, beginning with the late nineteenth century,2 and some
descriptive material on the several dialects is also available.' In the
prese nt study, data collected at first hand from informants from the
three communities will be set for th, collated, and compared. The
remainder of this chapter lists the sources used and presents an
overall view of the Meso potamian dialect area and of the Baghdad
situation. Chapter 2 discusses socia-reli gious dialects in the Arab
world a nd elsewhere, and Chapters 3- 6 study the main features of
Muslim Bag hdad i (= M), Jewish Bag hdad i ( = J), and Christian
Baghdadi (= C). Chapter 7 reeapitufates the main similarities and
di fferen "es and probes the question of their ge nesis and preservati on.
1.2 SOURCES. 1.21 Baghdad. Data o n M and C ste m principally
from persons residing or studying in the Un ited States, while data
o n J was gathered chiefly from persons now residing in Israel. The
half-dozen Muslim informants consist of four Sunnis and two Shiis,
all nati ve Baghdadis, fhough in some cases one of the parents, and
in most cases at least one gra ndparent, was not Baghdad i and even
not Arabic-speaking. All the Muslim informants were stud ents in
3
l NTROD UCTION
their twenties, all males, and all from the middle o r upper strata of
Baghdad society, hence had a good command of modern litera ry
Arabi c. T he Christian info rmants consisted primarily of a woman of
Jacobite extraction and two men of Chaldean origi n; all three were
nati ve Baghdadis, but in each case one of the parents was from
outside Baghdad. In the last two cases, o ne gra ndparent was no nArabic speakin g. Both of the men were university students, onc in
his thirties and one barely twenty; the woman , in her thirt ies, was a
housewife and d id clerica l wo rk ; all had a passable kno wledge of
modern literary Arabic. The Jewish info rmants were all nati ve
8aghdadis of nati ve slock, and in most cases both grandparents were
also nati ve Bag hdadis; th o ugh I was ex posed to this di alect from a
score or more persons, I count here only those four men and three
women, all in their thirties, whom I interviewed at length and repeatedly. All had a good knowledge of literary Arabic. In addition to these, [ made use of a number of tape recordings of Radio
Bag hdad prog ra ms in Muslim Baghdadi, and of the available literafure on the dialects concerned.
1.22 Other dia lects. For purposes of pe rs pective and co mparison, it was found necessa ry to gather basic data on as many
other Meso potamian dialects as possible under circumstances that
made a fi eld trip to the area im practicable. I inter viewed at length
in the United States two Muslim informants from Mosul , and more
briefl y one Clujstian and (in Israel) one Jewish informant from
that city. I obtained ' particularly detailed data on the 'Ana dialect
fro m a single M uslim informa nt fro m that city. Fo r rural Lowe r
Iraq, I interviewed a Columbia University student who was a native
of Qa rya t Sayyid Razin, a hamlet of perhaps two hu~dred inhabitants
in the al-l;Iilla province (n al,l iya of Sadd at al-Hindiya, qa<;la' of Musayyab); the in fo rmant, a Shiite in his middle twenties, seemed to
have retained a good command of his nati ve dialect. For the rural
dialects of the Amara region, I had no direct co ntact with info rmants, but have drawn on a number of tape reco rdings, one fro m
Radi o Bag hdad (a play in the ru ra l di alect of th at regio n, wi th no
specification of loca lity and an air of only partial authenticit y) and
two kin dly forwa rded to me by Gra ham Leonard , who made them
while in the Middle East. Both informants thus recorded were from
th e AI-8u M ~a mm ad su b-d istrict. Eac h reco rded a brief auto biography. . a story or anecdote, and a number of wo rds and phrases
from a list provided by me. Mr. Leonard also sent me similar recordin gs of informants from Kuwayt. To Victor Ayoub [ am deepl y
mdebted for a similar recording, made in [ran, of an infor ma nt
from Ahwaz in Khuzistan. On the dialect of the Je ws of Amara I
have had many communications from a frien d to whom th is d ialect
is native and who has, in addition, permitted me to make use of
his unpublished work o n the verb in th at di a lect ( Ko hen, n,d.) .
For Basra, I have interviewed one Sunni Musli m in the United States
and obtained detailed data from one man there and ~ne woman in
!erusa.lem. ~he scanty information I have on Hit ste ms fro m a single
1Il1erVIew with a Karaite of that town now residing in Beersheba;
for Tekrit I have only some indirect information from persons who
made brief visits to the city. For the Anatolian dialects, I obtained
rather detailed information fro m Jewish informants from Urfa and
Swerek (Siverek) in Urfa province, a nd fro m CarmO c (also pronounced Carmiik, perhaps i. q. <";ermik in Diya rbe kir province), and
from a Jacobite nati ve of Qara biis (perh aps i. q. Kara bahc;e in Diya rbeki r province), as well as some sketchier data fra in a Chaldea n
native of Se'ert (Siirt, in the province of that name). All references to
these dialects not attributed to a ~v ritte n source come from these
informants.
I NTRODUCTION
to the verb and III - prefi xed to the object, e.g. Mlsefta laxuyal =
Ise fet axuyal 'you saw my brother';
U) the use of laku/ ' there is', usually with its negative Imakul over
(no n-sed.)
Lower Iraq
Upper Iraq
Anatolia
gelet
gelet
gelet
Muslim
(sed.)
gelet
qellll
qeltll
No n-Muslim
qeltll
qellll
qeltu
The qellll-dialects a re akin to the oasis dialects described by Cantineau and to the sedentary dialects of the Aleppo region. The geleldialects are closely re lated with the Beduin dialects of the Samiya,
on the one hand, and the dialects of Kuwayt, Khuzistan, and the
Persian Gulf area on the other. 7 The relationship between the Iraqi
dialects and Central Asian Arabic remains to be probed. 7a The main
fea tures that c haracteri ze the Mesopotamian dialect area, in the
sense that they a re shared by most of the dialects irres pective of the
qellu-gelet ~icho t o my, and are lackin g or not common in most other
none are peculiar only to the dialect mentioned. In the tab le, the
items are chosen to illustrate the following features: (a) refl exes of
OA Iq/; (b) reflexes of OA Ik/; (c) reflexes of OA Ir/; (d) reflexes of
of OA lui ; (e) reflexes of OA/al before Iii ; (f) lreflexes of OA lal
before Iii ; (g) reflexes of OA word final /a'l ; (h) reflexes of the nominal
the 3rd pers. masc. sing. and of the 3rd pers . fern . sing.; (j) the personal endings of the verb in the 1st pers. sing., the 3rd pers. fern. sing.,
and the 3rd pers. plur.; (k) the presence or absence of the two Form
I verb paradigms, as in OA l kalabl vs. Isarib/; ( I) the terms for
'here', 't here', and 'thus',
Mosul
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)
qal
ka n
yk un
gal)
kell
jemc'
bazizin
soda
badli
Muslim Baghdadi
gal
'he said'
can
'he was'
yku n
fal)
'he went'
'all'
'mosque'
kull
jamc'
bzazin
soda
badla
'cats'
'black (r.)'
'a suit of clothes'
(i)
(j)
(k)
(1)
i)en!a
badleti
badletna
badletu
badleta
abunu
abuha
katabtu
katabet
katabu
katab
segeb
segbet
segbu
honi
hnuka
or honek
hakeo
I) un!a
badelti
badlatna
badelta
badlatha
aba
abuha
ktabet
ketbat
ketbaw
ketab
serab
serbat
serhaw
hna
hnaka
hici
'wheat'
'my suit'
'our suit'
'his suit'
'her suit'
'his father'
'her father
'{ wrote'
'she wrote'
'they wrote'
'he wrote'
'he drank'
'she drank'
'they drank'
' here'
'there'
'thus'
1.4 THE BAGHDAD SITUATION . 1.41 Recent figures for the total
population of Baghdad, with Kai)miya and other subur bs, give a
total of abo ut 780,000' A breakdown of th is figure into members
of the Muslim, Jewjsh, and Christian communi ties is hard to come
by and has, moreover, undergone considerable changes in the past
two or three decades. T his change results principaily from (a) the
very large immigration of Muslims that has taken place from the
countryside, (b) the smaller but steady infl ux of Christians from the
north, (c) the wholesale emigration of Jews that took place about 1950.
About 1920, the total population is estimated at around 200,000,
with about 135,000 Muslims, 50,000 Jews, and 15,000 Ch ristians' 0
Judging from available ""stimates, I I it seems fair to state th at the
ratio of Muslims to Jews to Christians for a century or so preceding
)950 was not far removed from this, i.e. oscillated around a ratio
of 7 to 2 to 1. There are, unfortunately, no estimates of how many
non-Arabic speakers there were in each community: Kurds, Turks,
and Persians among the Musli ms; Armenians, Assyrians, and Aramaicspeakin g Chald eans among the Christ ians; perhaps some Persianspeaking Jews. My impression is that the Jews were almost all Arabicspe'aking, while a good many Muslims (especially before World
INTRODUCTION
War J) and proportionately even more Christia ns spoke other languages. The only point that is essentia l for this prefatory synopsis of
the Baghdadi Arabic dia lects is that there is a majority dialect (of
the gelel type) and two minority dia lects (of the qellll type).
1.42 That three markedly different dia lects, each with its own
phonology and (especially) morphology and each with its own
syntactic and lexical peculiarities, are spoken by members of the
three relig ions is beyond doubt. It seems nearly as certain, with
all the reservations stemming from the fact that th e inves tigati on
was not carried out in situ, that th is dialect cleavage correlates rully
with communal affiliat ion. Provided th ey are Arabic-speaking native
Baghdadis, all Muslims talk M, all Jews ta lk J, and all Christians
ta lk C. A few qualifications which do not invalidate this statement
are neverth eless in order. In the first place, J a nd C are spoken respectively by Jews and Christians largely at ho me and wit h coreligiollists, wh ile M, the domina nt dialect, is used in public and in intercommunal situations by the many Jews and Christians who have a
a command of it. A good many non-Muslims seem to be nearly
perfectly bi-dialectal. As a consequence of the special position of M
as majority dia lect, non-Arabic speaking Christians (most notably
the Armenians) who acqu ire A rabic as a second language may learn
not C, but M ; I am personall y acquainted with a number of Baghdadi
Armenians who, as a second language, speak o nly M. Another conseque nce of the special status of M is th e tendency among some nonMuslims, especially Ch ristians, to adopt it, or certain features of it,
even when speaking with their coreligionists, s~ ' that there may
conceivably be non-Muslim homes in which M or somethin g very
much li ke M is spoken rat her than C or J. Questi oned as to this, my
informants all indicate that th ey know of no such situation, but they
do report a number of ihdividual M features replacing "old-fashioned"
C or J features in the speech of the younger ge neration.
1.43 While J is a relatively unifo rm dialect, there are some mi nor
differences among my C in formants and some variat ion within M as
well.. The variati ons within C canno t, at the present stage, be cor-
related with the speaker's affiliatio n to a specific sect or ri te. The
va riations within M do not seem to be in any way connected with
the five Muslim dialects believed to exist in Baghdad by L. Massignon
(see note 2); some are clearly due to the existence, in present-day
Baghdad, of large groups of immigrants from the countryside. Some
10
INTRODUCTION
though in some cases it might also be possible, given further resea rch,
to correlate them witb social class, the lowe r strata being, to a
considerable degree, made up of just such recent arriva ls from the
any dialect so far described , is far more similar to the Christian and
II
Mosul type than it is to the Muslim dia lects of Lowe r Iraq. What
Inferences may be drawn from th ese ali gnments wi ll be discussed in
Chapter 7.
for Basra and Amara o nly. Not only do Jewish informants from
these cities speak a dialect which is, to all in tents and purposes,
identical wit h Jewish Baghdadi, but the existence of the three-way
split in their ho me cities, with the Muslim s spea king a gelet-dialect
and the Jews an d Christian s a qellu-dialect is to them a matter of
common kno wledge. In the case of Basra, thi s is confirmed by a
Muslim info rmant, who speaks a dialect quite similar to Muslim
the Christians there speak "just like we do." On the other hand, this
socia-religio us clea vage does not seem to exist in Upper Iraq. From
informants and from the Iitel'ature lJ it is clear that members of all
co mmunities in Mos ul speak a qeltu-di~l ect, as do those of 'Ana and
(probably) th ose of Tekrit and Hit. There are unquesti onably subdialecta l differences within those citi es (my Jew ish informant from
Lower Iraq.
1.45 Underscoring once more wha t has already bee n sa id about
the qeltll-gelet split, ihs worth pointing out that, in a city li ke Baghdad,
,
I
I
I
,,I
l3
14
IS
correlate well, for the most part, with communa l affiliation. The
follow ing table, abstracted from Cohen, 1912, lists all the differences
reported there as between Muslim Algiers (= MA) and Jewish Algiers
( = JA):
(not all) Christians and Jews deviate from majority usage wi th respect
to intonation pattern s, voca l qualifiers, certain all ophones, the
frequency of certain consonantal assimi lations, the proportion of
Classical or Neo-Class ical vocabu lary item s, certain idioms, and the
prop~rtion and phonetic trea tm ent of European loanword s. 17 In the
case of the Jews , there are additional differences due to the presence
of a Hebrew vocab ulary and , for some speakers, the influence of a
number o r .non-loca l varieties of Arabic~ imported via immigration.
Some of the differences just listed are quite subtle, some are unstable,
and few if a ny correla te perfectly with communal affiliation. In other
words, it is quite difficult for anyone to say wit h certainty that a
given utterance will be spoken in a given way by a Jew , in another way
by a Muslim, and in a third way by Christian . A similar situation
seems to obtain in Aleppo and Cairo , though to an even lesser degree. ls
In Yemen, the dialect spo ken by the San'a Jews and that spoken by
the Muslims in that city differ principally (perhaps exClusively) by
the Hebraic element in use among the former. 19 In the North Pales-
loans from lA
Features (a), (b), a nd (c) do not correlate perfectly, i.e. some speakers
of lA show usage listed as MA and vice versa. Features (m) and (n)
also imply relat ive frequency rather than absolute presence or absence
16
PHONOLOGY
3.1 PROCEDURE AND NOTATION. The present chapter surveys
the phonologies of M, J, and C from a point of view that is essentially
historical and comparative. Phonetic description of phonemes is
held to a minimum ; on the other hand, a good deal of mo rphophonem ic detail is included, especially in the sections on conso nant
clusters. In each of the sections, an overall view of the present situation
is first given, followed by a more detailed disc ussion of the divergence
in historical correspondences which constitutes the main differences
among the three dialects. The symbols used are, it is hoped, largely
self-explanatory and familiar; note, however, that since C is used for
" Christian Baghdadi," the symbol K will be used for "any consonant"
side by side with V for ".any vowel. " Word stress is marked only
where its position cannot be determined by the well-known rule
of thumb, "stress VKK or VK closest to the end of the word; if
neither VKK nor VK are present, stress first V. "
3.2 CONSONANTS. 3.21 Overall view. (a) The inventory of
consonant phonemes is nearly "the same" for M, J, and C. By this
is meant that a single set of sym bols can be used for all three with,
on the whole, very nearly the same allophonic content for each. One
exception is the absence of interdentals in C , resulting in an additional
phoneme NI in (} corresponding to MJ If. There are, however,
considerable differences in distribution, frequency, and historical
correspondence. The following table lists the MJC consonants, with
phonemes not shared by all three dialects in parentheses:
b
p
f
I;>
(<;I)
d
z
(5
0)
I
\
S
w
~
()
lJl
17
q
g x
18
PHONOLOGY
(b) The phoneme Ipl occurs in all three dialects: MJC/pOsij 'veil',
I(opal 'ball', Ipardal 'curtain', Iplawl 'rice dish', Ipaspasl 'he wh ispered', I(appasl 'he threshed about'; occasionally J and C have Ipi
for M/b/ : JC Iqapagl 'lid' for M Iqabagj. This Ipi is, of course, found
largely in foreign words where it stands for an original Ip/, sometimes
also for origina l Ib/ : Ipaysekel/ 'bicycle', Ipasl and Il}asl 'bus' . In the
rural dialects, Ipl is less common, being often replaced by Ib/,24
(c) The phoneme Ihl is present in all three dialects, but while the M
pronomina l suffixes-/ hal and-/huml preserve it in all positions, some
( :< Ibwahdak/); M/ franisl 'lamps' (J/ ffanisl and Ifwan is I but C/ fawe-
all omorphs of the corresponding J and C suffixes are with, and others
M/iini umartakl " ordered you' and lani wmartakl " a nd your wife'
usually sound exactly a like though they may sometimes be distinct;
in general, transcriptions involving initial lyKI and IwKI should be
understood as [iK] - [y;K] and' [uK] - [wOK], respectively.
(j) On III vs. /! /,. see 3.23 belmv. As for I ~/, cf. MJCjjaHI 'it
. creaked' vs. /iazzl ' he sheared'" and JI,erf/, M/ ~uruf/, C/ zeref
'envelope'. In the labia Is, n'ote M/ fakkl 'he opened' vs. Ifakk/ , more
commonly Ifaeel 'jaw', though JCjfakkl 'he opened'; MJCjl}iil}al
'father' vs. Ibabal 'his door (M), her door (JC)'; the contrast Iml vs.
Iml is somewhat moot: only ImaYY/, ImaYI 'water', but both M/maral
19
graphs below are accordingly devoted to reRexes of the OA interdenta ls, of OA/ I/, OA/r/, OA/k/ , and OA/q/, respectively.
3.22 Reflexes of the OA interdentals. (a) In C, the interdenta l,
19/, 10/, and II>I have been replaced by the corresponding stops It/,
Id/, and /c)1, whereas they have been retained in M and J. Thus
Cjtnenl 'two', Ihadal 'th is', lal}yarJI 'white' vs. MJ/Onen/, Ihaem/,
jabyaQj. However, informants indi cate that th ere is fluctuation in
this respect among C speakers, with a good many of the younger
generation reintroducing interdentals as a result o f schoo l and
majority influe nce; two of my three main C informants used inter-
dentals themselves (at least whe n speak ing to me) but on direct
questioning readily volunteered variants with stops and characterized
together; in this respect C does not even go with Mosul, and the onl y
other point in the Meso potamian area so far noted as having stops
for interdenta ls is L:armt1 c (Urfa province, Jewish informants);
Qa rabas and Mardin have int erdenta ls, while Siirl has the unusual
and /mara/ 'woman'. A feature of the three dialects is the gem ination
to change 101 to Idl in three or four words (pp. 134, 155) including
the ancestor of this word Ijredi/, namely Ijuradl for Ijurao/.
3.23 Reflexes of OA/ I/. A velarized /!I is to be found in M, J, and
C, bu t whe reas all three have it in the name of God (except in jflm allaj
21
PHONOLOGY
20
COMMUNAL D IALECTS
I~
BAGHDAD
Iqaral
' he read',
as a styli stic device, while others seem to ca rry out the restitution more
own dialects. ln Baghdad and the other towns of Lower [raq, jgl
for Irl is a sort of hallmark of no n-Musli m identity, a nd see ms to be
keenl y felt as such both by those who shun it and by those who
heard onl y one (and been told of another one) a mong C speakers,
both in ~vo rds of non-Arabic origin whose etymo logica l pron unci-
Igl
contact wi th
'crow',
Ii!,!
Iri in
Iq/, so that in
has lilI in a few forms but mostl y Iqql < Iqg/, e.g. Iqqetul 'I've read;
Iqadaqqal ' I' m reading', Iqqal 'read!' and so on ; the wo rd for ' near
is Jiqqib/, comparative laqqa bj. InC, the verb 'to read' has Irl and
the word 'near' has lal between Iql and IIl/, hence no contact, but
my C in form ants give unassim il atcd for ms such as laqgabl 'neare r',
22
.r,
PHONOLOGY
(Tunis, Constant ine. Algiers, Fez, Mek nes), considers it "une maladie
des vi lles" though it also occurs "dans Ie Rif". 33 Cohen reports a
uvular [R] for Muslim Algiers vs. an apical tr ill for Jewish Algiers
originally had some such form as loba'al which, because of its unusual
peculiarity in the Baghdadi milieu (into which it may have been
in:tported from the north , as so many other C features seem to have
been) was changed back to lar/ ; this would explain the presence of Irl
rather than If!,/ in such ,Yords. That some such explanation might be
valid is indicated by another C fo rm with Irl rather than IP'!, namely
Igarbell 'sieve', for which Mosul has lilubel/, with the vowel probably
resulting from a chronological sequence [irb] > [,gb] > [,wb] > [lib],
though the lal of the C form is puzzling (cf. also this word in the
lexicon, Chap. 6).
(e) The replacemcnt of Irl by Igl or the like is not unknown as a
23
(i.e. the reverse of the Baghdad situation) though he adds that there
are individua ls in either community who ex hi bit the reverse phenomenon. 34 Colin li sts as one of the features of Moroccan urban
dialects the fact that Irl "often" sounds like the French [R]." The
latter implies, and the first two state explicitly, that this [R] is not
merged with [g] into a single phoneme. On the Irl of Central Asian
Arabic, Tsereteli says the following: "Vibrant of back articulation:
is sometimes pronounced as uvu lar r, with which it interchanges" ;36
Ir/
ciation of the Hebrew Irl by Sa'adya Ga'on (d.940).38 Sa' adya was of
Egyptian birth but spent the latter part of his life in Iraq; in commenting
24
PHONOLOGY
on an obscure passage of the Sefer Yesira, he says that the Hebrew r belongs with b,g, eI, k,p, and 1, since it can be pronounced in two ways, one
soft (rax) or weak (/Ialas) and the other hard (qase) or strong (gibbor) .
What is mo re to the point, the r is pronounced in these two ways by
Old Testament readers of the Tiberian school, whereas those of Iraq
pronounce it in these two ways "in th eir speech , but not in their
reading." He states that they refer to one variety of r by the term
makrux and to the other by th e ter m gayr makn/x. It is tempting to
believe (as do Gumpertz, Mansour, and Morag) th at this refers to a
situation exactly parallel to that found in J today: they had two ways
of saying r in their [Arabic] speech, namely one Irl and one 1M reflex for
OA/r/, but only one, namely Ir/, in thei r reading of the Hebrew
Scriptures, and the terms used to designate them (unknown to the
Arabic dictionaries) so und as thou gh th ey might mean so mething
like "uvular" and " non-u vul ar," res pectively (see note 37). It is surprising that if this had been the case, Sa'adya should say nothing of
the similarity of one of these pronunciations with Arabic Ii!.! or the
le nis variant of Hebre w g; the proposed interpretation seems plausible
enough, but others a re not excluded. It must be added that the fact
that Sa'adya speaks of the Jews onl y does not necessa ril y imply that
thi s pronunciation was to be found among Jews to the exclus ion of
Muslims and Christians; hi s focu s 0( att ention is Old Testament
reading, not comparative dialecto logy. Incidenta ll y, it is not at all
certain that the words " in their speech" refer to Arabic. A century
later, Ibn Sinii (d . I 037) specifically includes a "/g/-like Ir/" among
sounds Jlo t occurring in Arabic, and while he discusses other dialectal
or ind ividua l peculiarities, is silent on Irl > /gj.39 Unlike Jiihi ~ and
Sa'adya, however, Ibn Sin a did not reside in Iraq. Thus from the
older sources that have thu s fa r come to my attention, the most th at
can be sa id is that there may be traces of such a shift in the older
sedentary dialects of Iraq. It certainly cannot be said to have been a
very widespread shift , if one may judge from it s abse nce in some of
the prese nt-day qelill-d ialects, notabl y the A natolian varieties. The
evidence from the Central Asian dialects is moot and as yet hard to
interpret. Another piece of negat ive ev idence is the treatment of
Arabic loanwords in the Neo-Aramaic dialects of Upper Iraq and
Kurdistan: a ll such words with etymological Irl have Ir/, implying
Irl and not Igl in th e so urce dial ects' o For what it is worth, I note
in pass ing that amo ng the Iraqis I have known, no less th an six (th ree
Muslims, two Jews, and one Christian, all of Baghdad) were unabl e
to produce the ap ica l trill that is normal in their dialects, a nd rep laced
it by 1/ or a similar spirant. In other words, they all had a true
lufJga for which, incidentally, they had no name, nor have I been
able to find one in any Iraqi dialect, though in other dialects, where
it may be less comm on, names for it do exist. The re lation ship between
this luega, past or prese nt, and the so und shift Irl > 11;1- if any _
remains to be probed.'!
3.25 Reflexes o f OA/kf. (a) In J and C, the regular ren ex o f OA/kl
is Ikl while in M, what must have been front varia nts and back
variants of OA/kl have split into the two phonemes lei and Ik/.
Thus JCf kiinl ' he was', M/ciin/, but MJCfykun/ ; JCfkbil;1 ' big',
M/cebir/, JCfk biii;l, 'big (pl.)', M/ki?arl (probably from OA/kubiir/,
cf. 3.3 below) ; J/kalb/, C/kalebl 'dog', M/ealeb/ , pI. J/klib/, C/kl eb/,
M/eliib/ ; JCfke1i1 'all', M/ kullf. There is thus, in M, morphophonemic
alternation of lei and Ikl in certain roots, e.g. those for ' to be' and
'big'; that th is alternat ion is not sub phonemic is beyond doubt ,
cf. M/bikl 'in you (m.s.)', Ibiel 'in you (f.s.), Ibiieerl 'tomorrow' vs.
Ibiikerl 'a virgin '. [n addition, this al ternation is used fo r stylisti c
purposes, in that many word s have, in M, two poss ible fo rms, a
"plain colloquial" o ne in lei and a "mildl y formal " or "sem i-li terary"
one in Ik/, e.g. leiinl vs. Ikiinl 'he was', leene!1 vs. Ikenetl 1 was, you
were' lijiel 'that one (f.)' vs. lijik/ ; in so me cases this in vo lves other
changes in the direction of Classical Arabic, e.g. leebirl vs. Ikabirl
with the lal restored, or Ikalbl (esp. in the imprecation Ikalb ebn
elkalbl 'dog son of a dog') wit h th e anaptyctic lei of lealebl re moved
as wel1. 42 A phoneme lei also occurs in J and C, usually in loa nwo rds,
which are common to MJC, e.g. IM!f 'desert, co untryside" (Pers.
cII/), leiiyl 'tea' (Pe r~. cay), I~uel 'fau lt, guilt' (Tu rk. SIII'). As refle x
of OA/kl it occurs in J and C in what must be loanwords from M or a
similar dialect, e.g. leaHabl 'he clung', probably fro m k-I-b ; it also
occurs in a few Arabic words where it is not a reflex of / k/ , e.g.
leaqlabl 'tumbled ove r'. In cases where M has Ikl ra ther than an
expected lei , i.e. where the OA form is likel y to have had a fro nt
variant, borrowing from Classica l ca n usually be ass umed : Iktabj"
' book' (and throughout this root).
.
(b) The situation in Mis, in this respect, practicall y identica l with
that obtaimng in th e rural gelel-dialects of Iraq, a nd with so me of
the nomadic dia lects of the a rea, though so me Beduin dialects (t he
25
26
PHONOLOGY
27
M/8egil/ ' heavy ', etc. While IC/gl < OA/ql is relati ve ly ra re (JC
/ gam az/, M/ guma zl 'to jump') a nd presumably res tric ted to loa ns
a I~/ reflex, in M is m o;e comm o n: / buqal 'to stay', /qubal/ ' to agree':
Iqasmarl to in veigle, Iqa nn a'i ' to co nvince', /qeral ' to rea d ',
etc.
In M , th ere are three items wi th a Ik/ reflex: Iwa ketl ' time', / keta l/
' to ki ll', I kufaxl ' to sla p'" a nd a numbe r o f insta nces of a Ijl reflex:
IrnJ/ ' friend , lover', /jede rl 'pot' (fo r which J/geder/, cf. 6.5 below),
II! a rijiyal :co nfl agra tio n' (also used in C, tho ugh I/hgiq if) ; so me
form s In IJI ha ve equi va lents or doublets in Igl or Iq/ : Isarjil 'easte rn '
in Ihawa sa rjil 'east wi nd ', MJ C/ biib essa rj il 'the Eas t Gate' (name
o f qua rter,) but o th erwise MIC I;a rq il; /jedd a ml an d Igedda ml
' befo re' (JCfqeddam / ; cf. a lso / mgaddi/-/ mj add ij 'begga r' in 6.5
below). In such cases, my M informants tend to co nsider the fo rm in
Ijl as " pro vincia l" a nd to prefer e.g. Igeddiiml to Ijedd a m/ , Ige rib/ to
IJeribl ' nea r', Iqaryal to Ijaryal 'village'so I,adiql fo r /,ad ijl in t heir
own speech; they thu s use fo rm s in jj/ in a few words o nly. and
speakers wi th add itio na l forms in Ijj wo uld, indeed, seem to show the
i n fl~e nce of ru ra l dialects, wh e re jjj refl exes are comm on (see nex t
sectIOn) . An alogously to the stylisti c va riati on descri bed above
betwee n Ikl a nd lei , M spea kers have so me " m ildly fo rm al" fo rm s
in Iql for " plain coll oquial" fo rm s in Igl o r Ik/ : Iqaribl for Igeribl
'near', Iwaqtl fo r Iwaketl 'time', Iqawil for Iguwi/ 's trong', etc. In
all threedialects, Iql a nd Igl also Occ ur in loa nwo rds: MJ C / pur taqiil/
'orange', MJCfg!ii,1 'glass'.
(6) The qel/II-dialects as a who le go alo ng with J a nd C in having a
Iql reflex of OA/q/. Here aga in, 'An a has /q/ in most cases but /gl in
some : Iqall ' to say', 18qill ' heavy', /qaml ' to ri se', Iwaqetl ' t ime',
Iqata l/ ' to. kill ', but Iga hwal 'co lfee', /grayyebl ' nea r', I bag ral 'cow';
a Simil a r situa tio n o btai ns in Hi t. In Carmue we have fo r OA/ql a / kl
with a ll ophones [q] [k] and [k 'J that pa irs off wit h a shi ft of OA/kl
to lei in a ll positions, pa ra lleling the situat ion in the sedenta ry dialec ts
dubbed " par lers S," by Ca nt inea u, suc h as that of Sukh ne and
Centra l Pal es tin e (Ca ntin ea u, 1939; 1956, p. 126). As for t he situa ti o n
in M, it clo sely resembl es tha t fo und in th e other gelet-d ial ects , th o ugh
there a re (as reg~rds re flexes of OA/q/) two d iffere nces between th e
urban gelet-di alec ts (includ ing M) and th e rura l ones. The first is that
som.c o f th e rural dialects have few refl exes in 1'1 /, so me a ppare nt ly
haVin g no ne ; th e second is that all rll ra l gelet-d ialec ls examined
28
[1.] (reco rdin g from Amara reg ion) or [y] (recordi ng from Khuzistan ,
Kuwayt), whi le the Iii < OA/ql is affr icated. In the few wo rds with
iii OA/ql borrowed by M, the morp hopho nemic altern at ion does not
take place: M/rfii/, pI. Irefian/. The affricati on of OA/ql is a hallmark
of the co untrys ide ; it is al so character ist ic of the nomad dialects of
the Iraq i and Syrian desert a reas ,52 with a dental affrica tion to [dz]
differentiating, as in the case of Icl < Ik/, the full y no mad ic camel
-,
herde rs of Arabian ori gi n from the sheep-and- goat Bed uins who have,
li ke rural Lower Iraq, Iii a nd Ie/. It is noteworthy that the sedentar y
PHONOLOGY
29
30
PHONOLOGY
,.
31
3.3 VOWELS. 3. 31 Overal1 view. (a) As in the case of the consonants, the inventories o r vowe l phoncmes are very nearly the same
. for M, J, and C. However, there are great differences in distribution
and in historical correspondence. As in other Arabic dialects, it
seems best to envisage the vowe ls as arranged into two sub-systems
o f short and long vowe ls respectively, thus:
Short Vowels
Long Vowels
e
a
32
PHONOLOGY
,.
,.
(iii) [A] near emphatics a nd Iq/ : [WAqqA] ' leaf', [A!!A] ' God'.
The difference between this distribution and that found in M and C
concerns the allophones of lal in final , unstressed syllables. In absolute final position, MC have ttl or [a] even if immediately preceded
by an emphatic, though not if preceded by [h] or ['], in which case
there is [a]; the same holds in final closed sylla bles unless the c10sirig
consonant is an emphatic; thus :
[01.103]
[A!!A]
[i,lal.l!A]
[ol.1 nt]
[A!!E]
[ahnt ]
[A!!E]
[ 1)a~\E]
[h U~ \ E]
[I;>A~AI]
[I;>A~iil]
[ I;>u~a l]
[A 9YA(\]
[sa'a]
[A I;>YAQ]
[sii'a]
[A!;>YA(\]
[sii'a]
In addi tion, the allophone of word-final lal preceded by Ihl depends, for M and C, on whether the Ihl is preceded by lal or not ; if
preceded by lal, it may be either tt l or [aJ; if preceded by any other
vowel, only ttl, thus:
[waddaha]
or
[waddiiha]
33
[wiiddaha]
[wiiddiiht ]
[waddaha]
or [wiiddiih t ]
[wiidd6ht]
[wiidd6ht]
It should be noted that this MC[t ] in word-final position is essentially a pausal phenomenon ; in close juncture with a following word ,
it behaves as in medial position, thus M[clnnaj 'we were', but
[elll nahnilkt] 'we we re there'. While the behavior of a ll 1 and M
informants is consistent with the allophonic distribution outlined
PHONOLOGY
(iii) Long [i] and [u] do, ho weve r, occur in unstressed syllables
in J as a result of certain historical and mor phophonemic processes to
be described below (3.33); these are equivalent to, a nd seem to vary
freely with , the sequences [iy] and [uw] respectively: Isayyabl ' he
abandoned', [siyyaba] or [siyaba] 'he aba ndoned her'; Imsayyebl
'having abandoned ', pI. [msibin], [msiybin]; /iawwazl ' he married',
[juwwaza] or [juwaza] 'he married her'; Imjawwazl 'married', pI.
[mjuzin], [mjuwzin]. In genera l, [i] and [iy] do not cont rast, nor do
[u] and [uw] (cf. J/hi yyil 'she', Ihuwwil 'he', MC/ hiyya/, Ihuwwal,
which could just as well be written with long vowels and a slDgle
One inf~ rm ant vol unteered the information that Ikallal 'sugarloaf'
(I. e. [ka lle]) IS one thlllg whereas Ikallal 'certainly not' (in semiliterary or mock literary utterances), i.e. [k~ II Aj, is something else
~ga lfl ; In thiS case the distinction was made by a very clear lengthenIIlg of the final [Aj of the lalle r term as compared to the short front
[e] of the former, bllt the quality co ntrast seems the more stable
and quantity in this positio n does not seem to be distinctive pc;
34
lal
vs. lal in such cases seems the most reaso nable both fro m the
point of view of notational simplicity and from the speakers' own
interpretation. This would thus represent a c1carcut case of phonemic
overlapping, with [A] assigned to / a/ in some environments and to
lal in others: Fo r the speakers, the final vowel of [HimmAj, for example, IS qUIte explicitl y lhe "same" as lhat of [mal] a nd not the
same. as ~hat of [QAt]. A striking confirmation of this native speaker
the excl usion of Iii and lui ; at any rate this certainly
seems indicated for the above verba l a nd participial forms; cf. also
J/yhudl 'Jews', Ili yhud/, i.e. [Iihud], 'the Jews' ; J/wlanil 'first', Ilu wliin il
i. e. [lulani] ' the fi rst'. On non-contrast wi th [ay] and [awl, see
3.37b. All three dialects have the typically Baghdadi mid allophones
.[e] and [5] as norms for lei and lill and the norm for lal is, near
front conso nants, more central than fro nt ; M speakers often have
~.
as [hunA] ' here' [uxrA ] 'other (f.)', contrast clearly with such items
as [Ije] 'he came', [ummel 'his mother', [h.ixre] 'another (f.); etc.
35
..
PHONOLOGY
36
for loanwords and special cases) is simple: both yield lei throughout
a fact which explains in large measure the almost complete absence
~f a lui phoneme in lC discussed in the precedll1g secllon) . But tn M
the situation is considerably more complIcated: M has both lui and
lei in such cases, but these are not necessarily reflexes of OA/ul ~~~
Iii respectively. In some environments and tn some morpholog
p;tterns, OA/ul is Mlel, in others it is M/u/ ; SIm ilarly, OAIII may
yield either Mlel or Mlul depending o n a number of factors. Here
are some examp les:
OA
qubba
qubab
xubz
bustan
hamil)
sidq
37
'dome'
'domes'
'bread'
'gard en'
'sour'
'truthfulness'
gu!;>!;>a 'room'
gu!;>a!;> 'rooms'
xubuz
bestan
bamul)
sudug
rub'
'quarter'
rubu'
aula
ya'kul
'a third'
'he eats'
'~ating'
OeleO
yakul
*makil
makel
qebba
qebab
qebbi
qebab
xebz
xebez
bestan
bamel)
sedeq
gebe'
OelO
yakel
mokel
besUin
I)amee;!
sedeq
rebe'
telet
yakel
mokel
(b) S'nce Mlel and Mlul are not only found as reflexes ofOAlil and
OA/ u/ 1 the ensui ng discussion necessarily antic ipates some details
,
f OA/a/' and of OA consonant clusters. Wherever
of the treat}llcnt a
'
.
'
eel a short
historical or morphological conslderahons lead us to exp .
1I
other than lall the choice between lei and lui IS usua Y
VOW el (
'
I
ntal environment
redetermined by contextua l factors: t 1C co.~s~~a ., J I . "
P
. ""[ J coloTing or [u -co OTing.
may be eit her "color-preservtng,
C
.
'
.
r OAI I Mlel for OAIII (or, tn given
The first will show M IuI or
u,
OA/'I OA/u/"
s for OA/a/) the seco nd will sho w Mlel for
I or
I' h'
case,
'
I I r OAI I /iI o r in given cases, la , t e
the third will show M u . or
U" ,
'11"1 Iy be lei
ana t ctic vowel separating consonant clusters, WI Si mi ~r
_
PulYaccOrd ing to whether the environment IS [eJ-coloTing or [uJ
or I
f II 'n 352 An exhausll ve
colaTin
but this is discussed more u Y I
..
. g.,
f all oss ible envi ronments ca nn ot be given here,. ?ut
~~~C~~~I~~v~n; shouid give an adequate idea of the sa li en t re~ulartlt~esh'
.
. .
t . re notably tho se tn w lI C
(i) Color-pre servUlg envlronmen s (1 .
,
_
the vowe l is flanked by a velar o n one Side and a non-1Mck. non
serving nor [uj-coloring; in such cases we have Mlel for OAlul and
~ friend s', Ibestanl 'garden', Iraje ll 'husband' , 10eleOI
OA/i/: Isedqanl
'third'.
(iii) The preponderance o f [ul-coloring environments is one
of the salient features of M in contrast to J a nd C and , indeed, to
and
apparent ly
no
color-preserving
environments:
PHONOLOGY
38
these dialects have e.g. Ikelll 'all', Iyakell 'he eats', unlik e M, which
has lui in these forms but, like M Ibarput:)1 'so ur', Irul;lU' I 'quarter'.6'
The nomadic dialects of tbe area seem to go along with the rural geleldialects in this respect. 66
3.33 Reflexes of OA/' /, (a) Whereas other different iating features tend to group two of the dialects as against the third (most
commonly J and C as aga inst M), OAlal is treated in three different
ways in the three dialects. Generally speaking, it will be seen that (i)
in J, OAlal is preserved as lal in stressed syllables, and in closed poststress syllables, changed to lei in pre-stress closed syllables and
zeroed-out in un stressed open syllables; (ii) in C, OAlal is preserved
as lal in all positions; (iii) in M, the picture is far more complex:
lal is preserved in closed syllables (stressed or un stressed), but in
open sy llables the reflex may be lal, lei, lui, or ze ro , dependin g o n the
OA
8aqiJ
xaOf
sawarib
sak.ki n
jamal
jamalayn
xabbaz
'heavy'
'light'
'mustaches'
'knives'
'ca mel'
8egiJ
xafir
swareb
scacin
jemal
8qiJ
xfir
swigeb
skakjn
jamal
jemlen
xebb5z
C
taqiJ
xafif
sawegeb
sa kekin
jamal
jamalen
xabbaz
(6) On reflexes of OA/al before Iwl and /y/, cf. 3.37 below. A
number of specia l cases and deviations from the genera l scheme
illustrated by the foregoing table will appear in the di sc ussion of
specific morphological patterns or individual lexical items. Some
additional facets of this threefo ld treatment of OA/al are the
following.
(i) In J, th e ze ro and lei reflexes appear in their expected places
with the greatest regularity and few deviations. Where OA fal was
preceded by initial /'/. it is usually reta in ed even if unstressed: /abu na /
'our father' , l axu nul 'his brother' l aka ltul ' I ate' , l aftahem l ' I understand', and so on thro ughou t ; howe ver, r~iI / 'well born' is regu lar.
The J treatment of OA/a/ res ults in special morphonernic alternatio ns
39
of lal, lei, and zero that give J verb and noun paradigms their apparent
intricacy, e.g. Ifatal)1 'he opened', Iftabul 'he opened it'; Ifatl)etl
'she opened', Ifetl)etul 'she opened it'; Iftabil 'open! (f.s.)', Ifetbihal
'open it!'; /jamalf 'camel', Ijmalul 'his camel', /jemlenl 'two ca mels',
and many more.
(ii) In C, the prese rvation of lal is nea rly as regular as its nonpreservation in 1. Deviations are less rationally classifiable than in J,
and include some common wo rd s with Iii : Ikbigl 'big', fjd idl 'new',
Iktil!.l 'much', where OA had lal between the first two co nsona nls ;
informants give Ibmigl side by side with Ibamigl 'donkeys'. In such
instances C goes along with 1, as it does also in adjectives which in
OA had the pattern qatltill: Ikeslanl ' lazy', /, e!Sfml 'thirsty', etc.,
though in other patterns with a similar syll ab ic structure, lal is
preserved : Ixabbazl ' baker', Imaftllbl 'open', etc. as expected.
(iii) In M, lal is preserved in OA closed syllables; its trea tm ent
in open syllables is complex and depends on several factors: whether
stressed or unstressed, the quality of the following vowe l, and the
quality of the adjacent consonants. The simplest case is th a t of laK I
in the following syllable: the rellex is zero except if the initial was j'j .
Thus Iswarebl ' mustaches', Irmadl 'ashes', Iksalal 'lazy (pl.)', bUI
lawademl 'peo ple', lasamil 'names': Even this "simple" case has
many exceptions, in part connected with morphology: many nouns
of the qattil pattern prese rve the lal (fsalaml 'peace', Isa rabl 'wine',
Ijamall 'beauty'), whereas most plural patterns regularly drop the la/.
A second case of zeroing-o ut is that of OA/al preceded by a stressed
syllable: lad mil 'a man' , Ibarbawl 'they fou ght', Isalmawl 'they
greeted', Itwa nsawl 'they enjoyed themselves', Itfetbinl 'you (f. s.)
open'. However, in the case of the last three verba l pa rad igms M also
has Isallemawl, Itwannesawl and Iteftal)in/, cf. 4.82 and 4.83; my informants seem to use both forms interchangeably. A third case is
that of OA/al followed by liKI o r lOKI in the next syllable; here the
reflex is lal only if the preceding consonant was /,/, 11)/, /'I, Ixl or /i!,/ :
j'atigl 'old', la~iJl 'well-born', IbaJibl 'milk', Ixafifl ' light', Igasill
'wash', j'ajuzj 'old woman' , instances of /a/ in qatil nouns in other
environments seem to be due to borrowing: I~adigl 'friend'. Ifaqirl
'poor', Iqalill 'little', Iqaribl ' near' (cf. the more ordina ry Ige ribl
' near'). Whe n OAlal was not preceded by one of th e aforementioned
consonants, it has been replaced by an lei which a lterna tes with
ze ro (and .ma y be co nsidered anaptyctiS): loebirl 'big', f be'idl 'far',
40
PHONOLOGY
'fat', Iyehudl 'Jews', /jenubl ' south', Ilewill 'long'. This lei is
present when the wo rd in question is preceded by silence or by a word
ending in a single consonant; if preceded by a closely joined word
ending in a vowel or certai n consonant clusters, the lei drops out:
Imudda lwilal 'a long period' , Ifadwebda jdidal 'a new one (f.)',
leanna ebirl 'he seems big'. Thi s elision of lei is, however, optional,
'neck', etc.) and by the behavior of the vowels when pronom inal
Iseminl
,.-
41
the different dist ribut ion of the lei and lui reflexes and in the absence
in M of the syllabic reshuffling that makes these rural dialects so
Thi s matter will re-appear in the morph ology , but deserves a separate
(M jxesba/),
paragrap h here.
(iv) In M, OAlal in a stressed open syllable changes to lei or lui
if it was immediately followed by anot her la/; if that second lal was
in an open sy llable, it has dropped out; if it was in a closed syllable,
it was retained . This phenomenon has thus had th e effect of consid-
Ighawal 'co ffee' (M/ga hwa/), /, rubi/ 'a vi ll ager' (M/,e rbij).
3.34 Reflexes of OA/il and lui. As a rul e, the OA high long vowe l ~
are represented by /i/ and lui, respecti vely, in all three dialects, though
the perfect of Form I ve rbs with their basic qalal pattern. If the
enviro nment is of the [ul-coloring type, the new vowel is lui, otherwise it is lei: Igu marl ' moon', l I:> u~a l l 'onions', Ikumasl 'he grasped',
. IkuI:>arl 'he glew up', IUI" arl 'he ordered', contrasting with Ijemall
'camel', Ijeball ' mountain', Isemacl ' fi sh', Icefanl 'shro ud', Igela'i
' he cut', Ireka!)1 'he ran', l(je bakl 'he laughed'. The same applies to
their lowering respect ively to lei and 161 before Ib/, Iql and Ii!.! :
Imale~1 'nice', l~a ~ e ~1 'who le', Ige~al 'smell', l~ t6 ~1 'roofs', lag61.11
'I go' (and so throughout the im pf. and impt v. of th is ve rb), Is6ql
'market', I ma~g6ql ' burnt', Imaql6ql 'worried', Isand6ql ' box',
/~6ga/ 'picture'. However, this is not carried out wi th e ntire consistency : lasuql '[ convey', cf. Is6ql 'market', labuql 'I steal', a nd examples
are not numerous eno ugh to a llow a conjecture as to the nature of
the variati on. Here again, C is similar to Mosul; which shows /e/
a nd 161 in similar cases. As to the J shorten ing of OA/il and lui,
(a phenomenon th at is com mon enough in the Egy pti an and Syrian
areas but rare in Iraq) there is a pract ica ll y id e ntical shor tening of
OA long vowels, includ ing la/, in 'Ana.
3.35 Reflexes of OA final la'i. In 3.36 the treatment of OA/al with
respect to 'imala will be discussed in detail. In this paragraph
attentio n is ca ll ed to anot her point of divergence among the three
dialects as to treatment of OA/a/: in the feminines of adjectives
denotin g colors and infirmities which had the OA pattern qat/a' , .
the /'I has dropped in MJC as in the ot her Arabic dia lects, but in M
the final vowe l is short and uns tressed , whe reas in JC it is lo ng and
stressed. Thus M/s6da/ , J/suda /, C/s6ditl 'black: M/ tarsa/ . J/tegsa/,
C/lagSiI 'deaf'. a nd so on throug hout; On the other hand. M does
cases in wh ich the second / a/ is final , i.c. may once have been long but
1903b; Weissbach,
1908, 1930)
I have
Ixsebal
'piece of wood'
to
Iii
and
lui
42
PHONOLOGY
6ibban
mizan
I!awajib
'dogs'
'mosque'
'flies'
'scale'
'eyebrows'
clab
klib
kleb
jame'
jime'
jeme'
6ebban
oe bbin
debben
mizan
mi zi n
mizen
I.l\vajeb
l)wijeb
ba wejeb
43
Ibasatinj 'gardens', M/ bsatin/, J/ bsatin/ , C/ basetin/. Where 'imtilaprone lal was Immediately fo llowed by Iyl, C has laYI (w hich in this
pOSI tion does not co ntrast with the regu lar ly expected Ie/) and J has
the reg ularly expected Ii/ whi ch in this pos ition varies free ly with
Ily/ ; however, this does not ho ld for all J reflexes, nOla bl y of th e
plu ral pattern qartiyil (qat ti'il), where J has la/ :
/.1ikaya
'adiy is
'story'
i)caya
'brides'
'rayes
bkiyi
'gayes
bkayyi
'agayyes
There is, in bot h J, and .C~ at least one in stance of mo rpho log ica ll y
defi na bl ~ pres~ rv~tlOn of / a/ where ';mdla might have been expec ted,
namel y
In
Thus JCj kbagl 'big', Imlal.ll ' nice', Is mflnl 'ra l', I!waif 'long', and so
? n throughout. In all lik elihood , th ese do not form real exceptions,
In . th~t they are pr? bably based o n an OA pattern qUId! even though
thiS IS unattes ted In Classical Arabic for thi s part icular word class
(see p~r. (b) below),69 There are, howe ver, a goo d many unsys temati c
rete~ tl o ns of / a( in give n words , which are not the sa me in J as they
,waqif
nayim
OA
'standin g'
'sleeping'
naye m
waguf
J
weqe f
n,lyyem
C
weqef
nayyem
~o ndlng to OA qiilil for ms, and yielding such doub lets as J/jeme'l
where DAlai was nea r /ii, notably th e perfect, th e imperat ive, and
44
PHONOLOGY
the active participle of Form III and the acti ve participle of Form
VI, no 'imcila ta kes place at all in either J or C:
(iv) A discussion of the treatment of the feminine ending is So mewhat extraneous to the question of the reflexes of OA/a/, since the
OA femmme endmg seems to ha ve been , in th e pause lahl or lal
rather than i a/. It is mentioned here only beca use it w~s subject to
a very specl~c. kind o,r 'h~llila resulting in an allomorphic split, so
that the. fe mmme endmg m J and C is now lal in so me instances
and /II m others. The fu ll de ta ils will ap pear in the mo rpho logy
but It may be stated here that in a very ge nera l way, C has lal neal:
emphatIcs and back consonants and Iii after other conso nants
whereas J has lal or /if depending not on the preceding co nso na nt '
but on the phoneme preceding that consonant: IiI if that phonem~
was mOAN , III, or Iyl, lal if otherwise:
OA
asami~
sam ib
musamii)
'I forgive'
'forgive !'
'fo rgiving'
asameJ:!
sa mel)
msamel)
asameil
samel)
msa mcl)
asamcl)
sameD
msa meJ:!
bayOa.
zayna
kalba
bazzuna
OA
ka,saHi
'a' rna
bala
sita'
~inna'
'egg'
'good (f.s.)'
'bitch'
boO.
zena
calba
'cat'
bazzuna
boOi
zeni
kalba
bezzfma
bed a
lcni
kalbi
ksala
ksali
kasali
a'ma
a'mi
a'mi
'yes'
'wihter'
'henn a
bali
bali
bali
seta
I)enna
se~i
seti
I)enni
Denni
OA
. (v)
45
bazzuni
Both the cardinal and the ordinal numera ls are anoma lous
?lIlal~ ha~e ,ro;ms w~th the expected Iii : ; Oinij 'seco nd ', IOHeOI
thlfd '. Iglbe I fo~rth, IXimcs/ 'fifth', etc" but the corresponding
III
Itaml, Italetl,
form l e mtil seems to be attested fo r Basra C hristi ans." For OAr aliil
' o n', MJC have ( a laj. The fi nal Iii of JCj hollil ' here' may hark
back to some such fo rm as Iha wnal < Ihii hunii/, but th e deictic
words seem to mak e up a s pecial ca tegory a nd the hi story of their
vocalic endi ng is problematic; a ll that ca n be said w ith certa int y
PHONOLOGY
46
'three
xamsa
sitta
'five'
'six'
'four
sab'a
'seven'
eamaniya
'eight'
lis'a
'nine'
' ten
'asara
tlaO i
agb'a
tlati
arba'a
xamsl
setti
sab'a
xamsi
setti
sa b'a
tmeni
(b) Except for 'Ana, and Hit where it is totally lackin g, the
'imdla is a characte ristic of the qellllMdia lects: Mosul , Tekrit , and
th e Anatolian dialects all have lei (in Mosu l, also lill for OA/al
tes'a
OA
Oa laOa
'arba'a
47
9mini
tes'a
'asga
'asga
in conditions quite similar to those indica ted for J and C. The same
sede ntary
dia lects
of
Beyond thi s, the Syrian area shows o nl y' imala of the feminin e e nd-
..
~
Oamatlin
'thirty'
'eighty'
lal
Ift/, except
in so me Lebanese
ing or of final
tliOin
Gmin!n
/iI
(shortened fro m
tiWn
tmenin
Iii in unstressed
sy lla ble) even though most nouns with a similar phonemic p_attern ,
. namely the plurals of the OA type qarali/, J has lal for OA/a/~ .
(vi) A number of cases in which J, C or even M show lei, N
or /iI where one would have expected lal o r lal m~st be dIScussed
separately. No conditio ning from an adjacent OAN IS ~resent m
C/nesl ' people' (OA and MJ/nas/), in J/keml 'how many (perhaps
not a case of 'inlala, cf. note 157), in JC/l)eblel 'pregnant' (M/1)cbla / :
OA/1)ubla/), which is taken up again in 6.5; in ?/'e~mel 'da:kness
(OA/, atma/, M/, etma/ , C/,etmi/) or in J/i)elmel . darkness (OA
Ii)alma/, M/i)elma/, c/cjalma/). As in many other dialects, meludmg
some where 'ima/a is o ~herwise unknown, the names of the letters
of the Arabic alphabet have lei in MJC, e.g. Ibe/, Itel, Il)el etc. A
few M words ma y have preserved an 'imiila which was once not
limited to the Jews and Christians of Baghdad, but chaqlle mol a
son histoire and the examples noted are problem atic in v~nous
ways: the history of M/hIcil 'thus' and M/anil ' I' is unc~rta!n; o~
MJC/balil 'yes', cf. 6.5; on an unusual M/jijl for M/dejajl he~s,
for .which J/jijl and C/jejl are no rmal; see note 106; on M/meznb/,
d ialects than to that of Mosul in that Mosul has iii for OA/al in
certain cases, whereas C has lei : Mosul Ibasitinl 'gard ens', C/baselin/ ; in addit ion both Mosul and some A natolian dia lects have
what may be called a "productive" 'ill/ala that is lack ing in both
C and J, i.e. lal in suffix less words changes to lei when certain suffixes with iii are added: Mosu l Ibestanl 'garden', IbestenCiI 'gardener';
Ibagdadl ' Baghdad', Ibagdedlil 'a Baghdadi'. The ' imala of J is unusual (among the dialects that have thus far come to my attention)
in two respects: the prevalence and cond iti ons of occurrence of Iii
for OA/a/, 73 and th e co nditi ons of the alternati o n in the feminine
ending. In nonc of the dialects in which 'imalll of interna l OA/al
48
PHONOLOGY
Mosul
Anatolia
Aleppo
klib
kleb
jeme'
basitln
a'mi
ka lbi
kleb
jeme'
basetin
kleb
jemc'
basetin
a"ma
a"ma
kalbc;
kalb~
' blind'
'bitch'
be(\a
be<ja
'egg'
kleb
jeme'
basetin
jime'
a'mi
a'mi
kalbi
kalba
bsatin
'dogs'
'mosque'
'gardens'
ka l b~
be<ja
be(\i
bC(\a
49
any adjective plurals of the type qital which, as has been pointed
out, show no 'imdla in prescnt-day dialects. Some nouns in which
the conditions for 'il1l(i1a are present are said to reta in lal , including
II.l imful 'ass' (cf. JCji)mag/) and others, in which the prox imity of
a back co nsonant is sometimes thought to have prcvcntcd the
change,77
(ii) The 'imala prescribed by some for forms in which lal
implies a radical y and alternates with IV is, as has been noted,
unknown in our dialccts; this category included such forms as e.g.
{ab, 'be good' impf. ya{ib, ball a 'to build', impf. yabll;' Sibawayhi's
statement that active participles of Form I ver bs havc no 'im ola
(though other words of the same qatil pattern do) is contrad icted
by (later) usage. but may have so mething to do with the qetel- qitel
spli t in J. 7 8 No examples of 'imala in verbs of Forms III or VI have
co me to my attention, and none occur in our dialects.
(i ii) Final lal does not appear to be listed as a separate cate-
'inliila; l;Iariri (d. 11 22) reminds his readers that their pronouncing
and not M, which have preserved a feature that was more widespread
and !;lim uses hiini 'here'; 79 cf. the forms Ih6ni/, Ibalil, Ii)etli/ , lemtil
discussed above. There is an interesting parallel to present JC usage
in an eighth century source quoted by Fiick and connected with
the treatment of 'aqtal forms with KrY: a dis tinction seems to have
been made between 'a'nla 'blind' a nd 'a'ma (mill) ' more blind (than)'
in that the former was pronounced with 'illldia (cf. JCja'mil 'blind ')
whereas the clative was not (cf. s uch clatives as JCja' lal 'higher').80
(iv) The 'imala of the feminine ending is briefly mentioned by
alects,
(i) In the noun, the proximity of a kasra is th e main cause
of 'imdla ;76 the stock examples are words likc lisdn 'to ngue', njdl
'man', cf. Cjlsen/, Ig jel /, J/lsin/, liljil/; l;Iilli has, in his Baghdadi
poems, forms likeflrid, lI'irid, mirid, birid (Hoenerbach, 1956, p. 135)
I/rib (ibid., p. 154). None of the sources consulted seem to include
j '
gory, and the significance of the received spellings with yd' deserves
in vestigation. There are many examples of 'inldla in this pos ition,
introduced into the arca. at latc r times, though of co urse they may
contin ue o lder loca l" nOI1-'il11(ila dialects. I give here, abstracted
from the sources consu lted, a cata logue under which 'imala, both
largely in words spelled with yo', some of which parallel presentday instances. Besides the verbs in K J-y already mentioned, and
the proll. suff. -nd and -ha, which have no parallels in our dialects,
we are told that particles do not undergo 'inuila. However, bald
'yes' and mota 'when' arc exceptiona l and are pronounced with
forbade 'imala after back consona nts and emphatics, para lleling
the usage of C, Mosul, Anatolia, and many Syrian dialects; while
others accepted it after such consona nts as well, paralleling the
,.
50
treatment in J (where fro ntness or back ness of consonants is irrelevant for feminine endin g 'imiila), or the M treatment of all final
/a/,s except after pharyngeals. This latter type, viz. 'imala of the
fern . suff. after both front and back consonants, is even said to be
typical of the 11I11lVol/a{hill of Kufa and Basra B '
(v) While the so urces have nothing to say that wou ld elucidate
the special J treatment of the numerals they do mention a number
of special cases in which 'imdla takes place "irregularly"; man y
of these are parallel to present-day usage: the exceptional particles
a lready mentioned, e.g. bala, cf. MJC/bali/ (and also Pers. bOle,
Turk. beli), as well as the word lias (cf. C/nes/), the names of the
letters of the alphabet (cf. the M1C treatment)" and the word !lUbla
'pregna nt' (cf. the lC/hebl(\j)B 4
.3.37 Reflexes of OA/ayl and law/. (a) On the whole, the treatment of the OA diphthongs in M1C is of a type familiar from many
Arabic dialects : lei and 161, respectively, except before Iyl and Iwl,
where we have layl and law/: M1C/betl 'house', Im6tl 'death',
lawwalf 'first', Imayyetl 'dead'. Diphthongs are a lso preserved in
certain morphological patterns: M1C/awsa'l ' broader', laybasl
'drier'. The contrasts lay/-/ el and law/-/61 are of very low functional
yield, but are sufficiently well-established : M1C/jaysi 'army', Ibesl
'how much', fjebl 'pocket', Mllbetal 'his house (M), her house (1)"
Imaytal 'dead (f.)'; C/gel).al 'smell', IgaYhal 'going (f.)'; M/zawjal
'wife', Im6jal ' wavele ngth', Ij6zal 'nut'; M/awsa'i ' broader', M /6~all
'I arri ve', M1C/aw/, 'or', /161 'or'. On the verba I. ending of the 3rd
pers. pI., M/n."1 alternating \vith 10/, lC/ul alternating with 101,
see 4.2 below."
(b) A feature that sets 1 apa rt fro m M and C is the treatment
of th ese OA diphthongs in unstressed syllable:" instead of lei and
16/, 1 has in such syllables Iii and lui and, in certain specific cases,
liYI and luw/. T h us M/bU)a/, C/ber).i/, but llbil)il 'white (f.)';
M/s6da/, C/sodal llsudil 'black (f.)'; M1C/betl 'house', but MC/betenl
vs. l l bitenl 'two houses'; M1C/y6m/, but MC/y6menl vs. J/yumenl
'two days'. T his al ternation between stressed lei or 161 and unstressed
Iii or lui also ta kes place in such loanwords as Ikekl 'cake' , Ipatetal
'potatoes', which yield J/ kikayi/ 'a piece of cake' and l l patitayil 'a
potato', In the J verb, it seems to have been extended to pronominal
endings in which an etymological diphthong would be unexpected:
Iqeltul ' I. said', but Iqelt61ul ' I said to him'; Iqalul 'th ey said', but
PHONOLOGY
51
Iqal6lu/ , 'they said to him' ; Iftah i/ 'o pen (f.)', but Ifetl)elul 'open
for hIm , etc.; for ?ctalls and so me etymological conjectures, see
4.2 below. As for Ilyl and luwl, we find th em in cases where the
prese nt-day st ressed alternants are still laYI and law/: llsayyabl
'he a bandoned ', IS,iyyabul ' he abandoned him' ; llsawwal ' he did'
(suwwanul :he did it'; J/ mka yyefl 'glad', pI. I mkiyfin/ ; J/mxa wweri
frr ghtenrng, pI. Imxuwfm/ . Howe ve r, luwl IS also found in passive
partlclpJes of K , -IV verbs: Imuwjudl 'present', Imuwzunl 'weighed' .
That these unstressed liYI an d luwl do not contrast with /i/ and lui,
respectively, has alread y been mentioned (3 .3I e) ; whether or not
they contrast wi th [oy] and [ow] is less clea r ; I doubt whether minimal pairs can be found , and speaker reaction leaves me uncertain
as to whether [mowjud] is kept apa rt rrom [muj ud]. Morphophonemlca ll y, of co urse, such a spell ing as Imewjud/ , paralleling Ime ktub/,
Imeftuh/, etc. wo uld be justifiable , as wo uld Isewwa nlll pa ralleling
Ixell.nul (fxallal 'he put, left') or Imkey fin/, / mxewfin/, etc. for
analogous ~easons . However, in s lIch cases it is prudent to "hug
the phonetiC ground closel y," and citation forms for such words
wi ll be written with fiy/ and juw/, which are to be interpreted as
[IY] - [i] and [uw] - [U]B. T his who le 1 alternatio n is, o r co 1Irse,
closely bound up with the red uctio n of OAlal to lei in unst ressed
closed syllable discussed in 3.33 above: just as Ika/b/ 'dog' yields
Ikelbenl 'two dogs', so */bayt/, when diphthongs were still diphthongs
must have -yielded */beytaynl then */ bi ytenl and finally the present
Ibitcn/ . Similarly for lawl > lewl > luwl > -Jul. No such alternation takes place in Form I acti ve participl es: jseme'/. 'hearing', pI.
Isem'in/ , Igayyebl 'going', pI. Igaybin/; no r in verbs on the pa tterns
qidal and qOla/ : Inesantul ' J aimed ', Id6xantul 'I rclt faint'.
(e) In the Mesopotamian area, OA/ayl a nd lawl are preserved as
phonetic diph thongs in so me places but not in others witho ut con-
nect io n to the qellll-gelel split. Mos ul has lei and /6/ like th e three
Baghdad dialects and so, apparently , ha ve the lower Iraqi cities as
a who le, as ha ve Urfa and Swerek- in Anatol ia ; however, Mardin ,
Qarabas, Carmuc, and 'Ana have preserved th e diphthongs, mostly
as fey] and [ow] ; so have so me o f th e nomadic Kelel-d ial ects, as
we ll us so me or th e rura l ones, including K huzistan and Kuwayt .
where th e situation clo se ly pa rallel s that of M. In 'Ana, whe re the
treatment of short / a/ in unstressed sy llabic c..::Joscly para llels th aL
of J, there is an equall y close parallel to Iht: J red uction of OA diph-
'.
52
thongs In unstressed syll ab les : [beyt] ' ho use', duo [beteyn]; [yowm]
'day', duo [yo meyn], etc.
3.4 STRESS. There is little or no difference in the place of word
stress among the three dialects. As in many, perhaps all , other dialects, that place is usually determined by the syllabic structure of
the isolated prefix less wo rd and, whe re this does not hold , by a
number of morphological consideratio ns. In the majo rity of cases,
stress is o n VKK or 'VK closest to the end of the word, and if neither
VKK no r 'VK occur, on the first V: MJCjjebnal 'we brought', Ijeb nakl
'we brought yo u' Jjjbul 'brin g (imptv. pl.)' Iwaladl 'boy'. In the
present notation , final lei, Iii, and lui are a lways stressed, final lal
and 161 a lmost always, so that o ne could add this to the rule and
refrain from marking stress on such fina l long vowe ls. e.g. Ml'ale/
.'o n him' , JCjl)eblel 'pregna nt', M/axul ' his brother', M/seftil 'you
(f.s.) saw him', (but Ise ft iJ 'you (f.s.) saw/) M/lliiOal 'Tuesday' ,
.J/suda/, C/s6diil 'blac k (f.)', M/saf61 ' they saw him ' ; in the case of
.fi nal lal and 16/, the few exceptions could easily be taken care of
in a sma ll list. Turning now to cases w here morphological co nsiderati o ns alter this overa ll pattern , the follow ing types OCClIr:
Ib"tabetl 'she wrote' vs. j katabet j 'you (m.s.) wrote' and so throughout
this pattern; with su ffixes, of co urse: / katabetu/ 'she wrote it', / katabtu/
'you wrote it'. In other cases in MJ as we ll as in C, a vowe l that is
historica ll y allaptyctic may, ir in stressable position accord ing to the
YKK-'VK rule, be stressed o r not more o r less opt iona ll y: MJC
PHONOLOGY
53
Ib~netnal or Ibenetna/, M/rajelhal or Irajelhal 'her husband' M
Igeletl ~1 or IgeJetla/, JCjqeletlul Or Iqeletlul 'yo u (m .s.) told h'il11 '
(III) In the Im perfect of Forms VII a nd VIII verbs M fl t
.
bet
"
I "
'
uc uates
~veen reg u ar stress a nd stressing the first sy llable of the base'
,~/afteheml a nd, lafteheml ' [ understand ' la nxubu~1 and ja nxubusi
get dIstracted ; J and C, on the other hand, always stress the fir~t
syllable of the base: J/afuihem/, Cjaftehem/ ; J/anxilbes/, Cja nxebes/.
A few other morphologically condItioned stress patterns will appea r
In the morphology (Chapt. 4). A feat ure that seems equally cha racteristic of M, ~ , and C is the very rreq ucnt stressing or a nUlllber'or
preposed. partIcles, such as Ili/- , Ibj-, Imen/-, /'al/- a nd es pecially
the negatives Ima/- and Ila/- and the interrogative MC/s/- , J/a5/-;
when the p~rt lcle does not itself have a vowe l, it draws the stress
as ~ear tO , ltself as possible:. M/sdassawwil 'what are you doing ?'
Isk~tabetl \~hat did you write', / setridl 'what do yo u want ', MJ
Im.a,hel wa~ not pretty (f.s.)" MJCjlat naml 'don't sleep', MJC
(bel aJal1 qU ickl y', M/, algii'l 'on the grou nd ', MJCjmenbet Jibetl
fro m house, to house', M/ mnessugu!1 'from work', J/asakul 'what's
the matter?, lasesmakl 'what's yo ur na me T.
54
55
PHONO LOGY
different ways in each of the dialec ts, and it is to thi s that we now
turn.
3.52 Fi nal clusters. (0) In ge nera l, OA fina l clusters are sepa rated
by a vowel in M and C with very few exceptions, whereas in J anaptyxis takes place on ly in certai n con sonantal environments. Thus:
OA
uxt
qalb
'sister'
uxut
'heart'
sa hr
mill)
katabt
'sa lt'
'you (m. s.)
ga!u!;>
sahar
meleil
ktabet
J
ext
qalb
saheg
mel l)
ktabt
C
exe t
qaleb
sa heg
melel)
kat.bet
wrote'
56
word: Ilaham zenl 'good meat', Ilal!amha/ ' her meat'. The differential
treatment of final clusters jn J as against M and C is thus a matter
of pausal treatment only: the anaptyctic vowel appears in J as soon
i~
actualized sometimes as
Ilbl and
sometimes as Ilebf under statable cond itions. Such morphophonemic clusters often correspond to OA phonemic clusters, but
not always: M/rajelj'husband' < OA/rajulj, behaves precisely like
/Caleb/: Irajlil 'my husband', Irajelhal 'her husband', l rajl ellaxl
'the other husband', IrajeJ laxl 'anot her husband'. We are thus justified in saying that Irajell contains a morphophonemic c1usterj1~and this will be one of th'e criteria whereby we will be able to
dist in guish such .a noun as / lal)am/ 'meat' from such others as
/ xa'r)ari 'piece of news': the first conta ins a morphophonemic cluster(un- and the second has no such cluster, its second /a/ being stable.
In the -morphology thi s will be put to use in such matters as classifying words by "bases" and iil simplifying statements regarding
affixation.
4
MORPHOLOGY
4.1
4. 11 Basic morphophonemics.
(a) The terms "root" and "pattern " are here used in the traditional
manner for the familiar discontinuous units of Semitic morphology.
Thus MJCjbladl 'country' has a root bid, of which the first "radical"
or K" is b, the second (K,) is I and the third (K,) is d; the same wo rd
has the pattern K , K,aK, or, using the traditional symbols for the
rad icals~ the pattern qldl. In the classification of wo rd s by patterns,
we shall refer less to the pattern of the actual phonemic word than
is generally lal, but becomes Iii when the patlern is grafted on a root
withK,- y:" JCja' mi/ ' bl ind', fern. J/,emytt/, Cj'a mya/. roo t '/I/y. As
to the patterns conta in ed in the feminine forms, we could say tha t
the J forms have a pattern qellii and the C form s a patter n qat/ci,
but I have preferred wherever possible to keep the notation inter5)
58
MOR PHOLOGY
59
wo uld be useless to ,speak of roots and patterns a re, when necessa ry,
designated by a simple formula, identica l with the phonemic symbolization of its most common a llo mo rph o r of its und erl yi ng form
(i.e. th at from which the others can be prod uced by fa milia r rul es).
Thus the pron. suff. -lla and -Ita a re represented morph opho nemically
with lo ng vo wels,' subsuming the stressed forms -/na/-and-/ha/as well as the unstressed -/nal and -/ha/, the quantity change with
shift of stress being automatic. The symbo l T to subsume all the allomorphs of the fe rn. suff. is, on the ot her hand , pu rely ad Itoe, as are
a number of others, e.g. L for the morpheme 'to' a nd L ' for the
relative pronoun (q . v.). The use of the plus-sign in in flectional or
deri vati o nal fo rmulas (cf. examples in precedi ng paragraph) is selfexpla natory. As for the grammatica l categori es and the cl assification
of the parts of speech, I ha ve more or less stuck to the trad itional
terminology , which seemed adequ ate fo r the purpose.
4.12 Overall vie w. There is little or no differentiatio n as between
M, J, a nd C as to the overall structure of the respective morphologies . There is, however, considerable differentiatio n as to phonemic
shape of mo rph emes, res ulting o nl y in par t fro m th e reg ula r phonetic
corresponde nces d iscussed in the previous c hapte r; and there is also
considerable differenti atio n as to deg ree and kind of morph opho nemic
alternation. The greatest differentiation is perhaps that fou nd in
the inventory and behavio r of the prono minal affixes (4.2) and in
the allo mor.phs of the feminine suffix (4.3) . The d ive rge nt morphopho nemics of the noun, particip le, numera ls, and ve rbs are, by and
la rge, predictable from considerat io ns a lready outlined in Chapter
3, but a rather fu ller analys is wi ll be fou nd in the present chapter.
Not unnatura ll y. a good many point s di scussed here are lexical
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
ani
ana
cnla
cnla
enti
en ti
C
ana
cnla
enli
60
M
3m.s.
3f.s.
Ipl.
2pl.
3pl.
huwwa
hiyya
e~na
entu
humma
huwwi
hiyyi
nei)na
entem
hernmi
MORPHOLOGY
C
huwwa
hiyya
nei:lna
entem
humma
M
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3r.s.
I pI.
2pl.
3pl.
-ItI
-ItI
':"-/til
zero
-'.i/atl
-/nal
- /tul
- /aw/"4
61
-/tul
-ItI
- /til
zero
- /etl
- /nal
- /teml
-lui
-/tu
-ItI
-Itil
zero
-/etl
-/nal
-/teml
-lui , - 101
UtI)
Utf)
l lil
Ito/, /tu/
llUl
(ft/)
l lil
(/t/)
Itil
62
M
3m.s.
3f.s.
Ipl.
2pl.
3pl.
63
MORPHOLOGY
COMMUNAL DIALECTS IN BAGHDAD
(zero)
(fat!)
/na/
/lU/
/0/
J
(zero)
(fet/)
/na/
(ftem!)
/o/ , /u/
C
(ze ro)
(fet/)
/ na/
(ftem/)
/ iJ/
/a//t//t .. in/
/y//t//n//t .. un/
fy .. . un/
,
/a//t/"/t .. en/
/y/-
/t/-
/t/-
/ n/ /t .. 6n/
fy .. on/
IY/-
64
65
MORPHOLOGY
(ii) The Inl of the post posed elements is elided when additional
suffixes are added" a nd the rema ining lo ng vowels undergo, in J,
modificatio ns before - I1a parallel to those outlined above: M/tketbiin/,
J/tketbon/, Cftektebiinl 'you (pl.) write', but M/ tketbiila/ , J/tektbolu/,
Cftektebu lul 'you (pl.) write to him '; M/tketbiiha/, J/tketbiiha/,
Cftektebuwal 'you wri te it (f.)'; cf. also J/tketbenl but Itketbihal
vs. Itketbelu/.
(iii) T here is considerab ly less differentiation in this set of prono minal affixes than in th ose occurring with the perfect. All three
dialects have the retention of fina l -/nl th at is typical of the Mesopotamian area and is found also in the Beduin, Peninsular, and
Centra l Asian dialects. Jts retention in Mesopota mia , as opposed to
its earl y disappearance in oth e" areas, is attested in "Middle Arabic"
tex ts and recognized as a ha llm ark of the Iraqi vernacular by fourtee nth centu ry so urces 9 ' Like so me of the other qe/Ill-dialects, C has
diffe rent postposed elements for K,-y verbs, viz. -/enl and -/onl
vs. -/inl a nd -/iinl for all o th ers; both M a nd J ha ve a single set, but
.I is the o nl y di alect so far no ted that seems to have generalized endings pr oper to K ,-y verbs;" a fact tha t is perhaps connected to
the J a ltern atio n lei - Iii a nd 101 - lu/. Here again M lacks the
masc.-fem. contrast in the 2pl. and 3pl. fou nd in the rura l a nd Beduin
dialects, though some M speakers seem to have it.
4.22 Object pronouns. The pron. suffixes postposed to particles
and no minal bases and to ve rba l bases enlarged wit h subject pronouns are listed in the following table. Where two forms appear,
the first is the one occurrin g after base-fina l V, the second that occurring after base-final K ; however, o n the forms with or without
Ihl in C, see (ii) below.
M
- ya, - )
- k, - ak
-e
,
- , -a
- ha
- na
- kum
- hum
-yl, - i
abiHki
biil + k i
'amm +ki
lIa/s+ki
abue
betee
'ammee
nafsee
abuk i
betek
abuki
betki
'ammek
'amki
nafeski
nafsek
-k
-yi,
- k, - ak
- ki
- nu, -u
- nu, - u
- ha, - a
- na
- kern
- hem , - em'
(- ha), - a
- na
- kern
- hem, - em
- k, - ak
- ki,
- )
~,
C'
66
I,
abunu
binu
abunu
b;+ H
abu
bi
'omm + H
'am ma
'ammu
'ammu
abt'+H
binu
I (
MOR PHOLOGY
67
form denoting possession I le/- rat her than Ille/-, and we may be
dealing with an entirely d ifferen t morpheme; see 4.93 below.
(b) With a direct and an ind irect object pronoun, the d ialects
have two procedures', One is to affix the usual direct object pronoun
to the verbal base, fQllowed by the non-enclitic a llo mo rph of L plus
pron. suff.: M/jiiba eli/, C/jiibu eli/, J/jiibu lIen i/ 'he brough t it to
me'. This seems to be the more infrequent of the two construct ions,
and may OCcur onl y when some special emphasis is placed on the
indi rect object. The second procedure is 10 affix the enclitic allomo rph of L plus pron. suff. to the verba l base, fo ll owed by a reflex
of OA /'iyyii/- plus the pro n. suff. referr ing to the di rect object. Some
such co nstructi on is employed in all three dialects, yet they differ
marked ly from one another in the detai ls.
(i) In C, th e indirect o bject is affixed to the ver b in the usual
fashion , a nd th e d irec t obj ect follows in th e gu ise of Iyiil plus pro n.
s uff.: Cfjiibli yii nul ' he brough t it (m.) to me' ; Ijiiblak yahal 'he
bro ught it (f.) to yo u (m.s.)" Ijiibl u yii hem/ 'he brought th em to
him', etc. In this way C, unlike M and J, makes all the ordinary number, gender, and person distinctio ns in both objects.
(ii) 1n M , L is attached as in C but th e pron. suff. a ttac hed to
it exh ibit so me spet:ial a ll omorphs a nd a re fol lowed d irec tl y (i.e.
witho ut any sembla nce of word boundary) by liya/- plus the pron.
suff. referrin g to th e direct object : M/jiibl iyal 'he bro ught it (01.)
to me', jjiibelkiyiihuml ' he brought them to you (m.s.)' wi th Ilkl
instead of flak/ ; Ijiibel':iyiihal ' he brought it (f.) to you (f.s.)" cf.
liiible':l and th e d ifferent position of th e a nap tyc ti c lei ; Ijiibelhiyii hal
'he brought it (f.) to ' him' o r 'to her', with I lh/ instead of Iial and
in stead of Ilha/. TIA,; th ere is a pa rtial blurring of th e gender d istincti o n in the direct object because of this infixed -/lh/-: in the mascu line, th is fhl may be a remnant of an older pron. suff. - /ah/ of
the 3m.s. , st ill to be hea rd in some dialects.
(i ii) In J, there' is an unusua l res huffling that results in an
infi xed -/yii/- preceded by L without pron. su ff. an d followed by
the pron . suff. referrIng to the ind irect object, with no prall. 5uff.
referrin g to th e direct object: J/jabelyii kl 'he brought him, her, or
th em to you (m.s.)', II.l kitulYii nul ' I to ld it (th em) to him', Ihkitulyahal ' 1 told it (the m) to her', Istgitulyiiheml ' I bo ugh t it (the m)
for them'. Th lls th e indirect object is specified in the normal way
as to ge nder, person , n umber, but the d irect object completely un-
..
I
, i
;:
68
MORPHOLOGY
specified. Side by side with these very com mo nly used forms, I have
more rarel y heard a form reminiscent of the M constructi o n (albeit
in persons who do not otherwise show M influence), viz. / kemmeliyll/
'he fu lfilled it for him' /ake mmelki yi/ ' I shall fu lfill it fo r yo u (m .s.)',
instead of / kemmelyii nu/ and /akem melyak/ . Note the normal vowel
changes wroug ht by the stressed -/ya/- upon the ver bal form s invo lved, the respective suffi xless for ms being Ija b/, / \:1ketu/ , /stgetu/,
/ kammal/, /aka mmelf.
(e) My data on pa ra llel constructions in the other Mesopolamian
dialec ts are insufficient for a fu ll-fledged compa riso n. The C construct ion is co mmon throughou t the Syrian area and seems to be
4.32 Allomo rphs in the iso lated noun. (a) In the isolated feminine
nou n ending in T, M words always have _/aj99 whereas J and C
have either -/i/ or -/a/, dependi ng o n the structure of the base, th o ugh
the conditioni ng factors are very ditferent in the two dialects . Here
are some illustrative examples, to be fo llowed by a detailed discussion:
'bitch'
'egg'
,
'trifl ing' (r.s.)
'big (f.s.)'
'snake'
'brolhers
calba
bei,la
i;la,ila
cebira
I)ayya
exwa
kalba
bei,l i
i;la,ili
kbigi
I)ayyi
exwa
kalbi
beQa
9a~ita
kbigi
~ayy i
ex W I
69
Note that besides t,hese voca lic a llomorphs, all three dialects have
a zero allomorph that acts lI ke a consonant, i.e. preserves the len th
~nd stress of the base vowels: MJC/meshll/ 'shovel' MC ~;\
prayer', J/$!fi/ 'synagogue'; MCfmda ril/ , J/";darAI 'care.'. and ~':' I
others; that these w~rds end in T is decided by the fact th~t the
of the zero allomorph IS taken by -/t/- in sandhi, J/ , Ifi t lekbigi/ 'th
Great Synagogue' . "On / bibi/ 'grandmother', /'abal 'ma ntle' se:
4.33b ~elow. As for the vocalic a llomorphs, the a lternation la/-/i/
IS, In ,controlled ' by the following factors:
(I) A base final emphatic or back consonant Ukl and any thin
g
forward of It are front consona nts) except lei a lways require -/a/
Iwesxal
'dIrty' Ida
I '
,
- - .
.
.'
,
,"
~qa, narrow, jmalei)aj 'l1lee', jga fi 'aj 'thin',
l
I!ab_ha fron t , Ihaya/ orga niza ti o n', /qe"a/ 'story' / henta/ 'wheat'
, '.
,
/ agl(;Jaj 'broad '. --:
Pi;';:
b f (ii) Base final /r/ , th ough rare, seems to req uire -Iii if preceded
y ront vowels, -/a/ If not : I mudiri/ 'directo r (f.)' vs. Isayyaral 'car"
slmIiarly Ig'l th t .
fl f
'
.
,
a IS a re ex 0 OA Irl requires -/il o r -/al according
to fro~t vs. non-front enviro nment: Ikbigil 'big', Izgaygi/ 'smal/'
/ebgl/ need le'. but Imagal 'woman', 1,6gal 'picture'; the few exam ple;
of b~se_ fin,~1 /g/ that IS not a re fl ex of Irl aU have -/a/ : lrargal 'empty'
/qa50gal spoon'.
,
(iii) . With no?-back, non-emphatic base fi na l consonants
there IS ~/I/ : Iqebbll roo m', 15effil 'lip', Idsut i/ 'pots', Iba'idi/ 'distant,'
1"_aJsll Impure', Izelzil 'naughty', Idesdfisil ' loose overgarment,'
!JeJII ~h:n ', Isamakil 'fish', Isallil ' basket', Isani/ 'year', I kelmir 'word,'
Il;elwll pretty', Imiyyil ' hund red'.
'
(iv) In a good ma ny wo rds whe re o ne wou ld expect -IiI, there
-/a/ (but appa~ently never the reverse); some cases are clearly d ue
to _borr~wm~ : Ilopa! '~al/', Iferca/ 'brush', I kleca/ ' ki~d of pastry',
Ihay5al cow, /Iagwal trouble'; there is -/al also in so me ki nShip
terms where -N wo uld be expected: Ixalal 'maternal aunt' /' amma/
'paternal aun t', Ijed?al 'grandl]'lOther'IOO
'
(v) Fmally, there is hesitation after base final 1\:1 / preceded by
front v~wels: one Ihform ant says /ge\:1i/ 'smell' where the others
have /ge\:1a/ , but one of the latter reports his mother says /geh i/,
SImIlarl y, Igayl;l/ arid /gayl)al 'going (r.s.)'; the fo rms with ~jij'
perhaps the older o.n~", are closer to the J pattern. As for the facto r;
condltlonmg the /I7-/al altern ati on in J, they are as follows:
( I) After av y base fina l consonant except Iw/, there is -IiI
is
70
if the base final syllable contai ns IY/, Iii or Ie/: Imiyyil ' hundred',
Inaymil 'sleeping', Igayl)iI 'going', iayqil ' narrow', Icerpayi/ 'bedstead', Izgaygil 'small', Igil) i! 'smell', Iwsi'il ' broad', Ikbig il 'big',
/'i!,iil 'wide', I!wilil 'long', Ifa qitil ' poor', Ijijil ' hen', Ijimdil 'frozen',
Imigq il 'rotten (egg)', Isminil 'fat', Izenil ' nice', Ibei/ 'egg', Imedil
'table set for the Sabbath', Ilebsil 'wearing', Ise m'il 'hearing'.
(2) The same applies if the base final syllable contains e
that may be zeroed-out through suffixation (this holds fo r some of
the above exa mpJes as weJl): / zalziJ 'naughty' (base zalez-), Iwe~x i/
'd irty' (base lI'e~ex-) and especially all the forms of the acti ve participle: not only Ilebsi/, Isem'i/, etc. as a bove, but a lso Imkamlil ' having
completed' (base mkCllllmel-), Imtal'il ' having take n out' (base
lI1!olle'-), Imsflml)il ' having forgi ven' (base II1sam eb-), and so throughout (see 4.7 below); other cases of e in the base final syllable must
be viewed diachronically: leb!!,il 'needle' but Isejgal 'tree' where
o'A/, ibral vs. Isaja ral explain the different treatmen!.lol
(3) A slight ly specia l case that is actually in keeping with
the stateme nt in (i) a bove is that of nouns on the patterns qiitel a nd
qitel with K,-y; thi: corresp onding feminin es still end in - Iii as
ex pected, but slo not differ phonemically fro m the masculine form s:
Imesil 'walking (m.s. and f.s .)" Ibeni/ ' building' , Il)ifil ' bare-foot',
/'i lil ' high' for both the m.s. and the f.s.
(4) In a ll other cases, i.e. when the base final syllable is
other than outlined a bove, the allo morph is -/a/ : Iqebbal ' roo m',
Igekbal 'k nee', Imotal 'a death', /iem'al 'Friday', Iwaqqal 'leaf',
Ids"tal 'pots', Isanal 'year', Isall al ' basket', Ihasal 'cow', Ileqmal
' morsel', II)agal 'hot' , Iweccal 'page' a nd of co urse all passive participles except those with K ,-y : Imkamlal 'completed' (base
II1kommol-) , Imta!'al 'taken out' (base m!alla'-land so on ; base
fina l ", seems to require the -/al allomorph no matte r what the preceding vowel: Ilabwal ' lioness/', I balwal 'genius', Ilagwal 'fuss',
I I)elwal 'pretty', but also l illewal 'pretty', lexwal 'brothers' , Imiwal
'frui t', Idewal 'fema le demon'.
(5) There a re a few insta nces with -/al whe re one might
have expected -Iii (t hough, as in C, apparently no examples of the
reverse): Ibental 'wheat' ' /l)unta/ ?), /, aylal ' famil y',1 sarikal 'company' (probably loans), Iswayyal 'a little' and Imlil)a/, m. Imlil)1
'nice'; I 02 cf. a lso plu ra ls on the pattern of Ibgaddal 'Baghdad is',
despite the /iI of Cl. Ar. Ibagad ida/ , and the discussion in 4.53 below.
,.
71
MORPHOLOGY
(b) The inva ria nt fem . suff. -/al found in M is also fo und in all
the other gelel-dialects that have so far come to my attention, as
well as in 'Ana and ,Hit, the only qellu-dialects that have no 'imala
whatever, and in the Centra l Asian dialects. As already mentioned
in 3.36, all other ,qf/lu-dia lects as well as most Syrian sedentary
dialects, have a n alternation resembl ing that of C. The Mosul dialect
differs from C in at )east one respect, namely in th at there seems to
be always -/al aften Ig/, even when it is a refiex of OAfr/ ; thus
Ikabigal ' big', Ikeigal 'abundant', vs. C/ kbigi/, Iktigif. The J alternation, which depends essentiall y on the vocal ic co loring of the
base final syllable regard less of the quality of the base fi nal co nso nan t,
seems unique" It may not be irrelevant to point out that in ot her
dialects which haye this allomorphic split there is often a J-Iike
conditioning in bases ending in r (now phonemically often split
into Irl and /r/). Thus North Pa lestinian Ikbiril ' big', lfatril 'lukewarm', vs. Ibyaral 'well s', Imaksural ' broken'. This suggests that
the present-day J a lternatio n may owe its origin to the Irl > Igi
shift. Assuming the alternation was once conditioned, as in most
dialects, by the quality of the fi nal consonant except in the case of
Ir/, a problem arises when e.g. Ikbirl beco mes I kbii!,/ and so ends in
a velar, like say, /,tlq / , which presumably had " fem in ine /'tiqaf.
One solution is for this new h i to behave like all other velars, and
this was ada pted \>y Mosul (fkabiga/, like /,atlqa/); a second solution is for Ii!.! to go on as formerl y, viz. to behave like non-velars,
and this is what occurred in C (fkbigi/, like l~awHi/ but unlike /'atiqa/);
a third solution is that surmised for J, viz. Igl goes on behaving li ke
a non-velar, and other vela rs follow suit (fkhigi/, so now also /, tiqi).
Th is explanation per se clearly cannot account fo r all the fact s of
the J alternation, and will eventuall y have to be either supplemented
or discarded .
4.33 Allomorphs in sandhi. (a) The three dialects differ as to the
aJ\omorphs of T that occur in external a nd internal sandhi, i.e. in
annexation and suffixation but this time with J and C practically
identical while M remains apart:
M
'room'
'my room"
'our room"
gul?l?a
gubti
gul?l?atna
,
J
qebba
qebbeti
qebbetna
qebbi
qebbeti
qebbetn"
72
M
'two rooms'
'a bedroom'
'the bedroom'
gubte n
gu\>\>at nom
gubt ennom
l .
qebten
qebbet nom
qebt ennom
MORPHOLOGY
C
qebten
qebbet nom
qebt en nom
73
M
'piece of bre~d'
'piece of meat'
,
'3 fly'
'a hailstone,', ~
"
'a star'
xubza
lai)ma
5ebbiina
i)aliJba
naJma
1
xebzayi,
lei)mayi
5ebbinayi
i)alubqy.i
nejma~ i
C
xebzayi
lai)milyi
debbenayi
i)alUbiiyi
nej mayi
,."I
.,
74
all th ree dialects, a hypoco ristic - /u/ :MIC/,a mmu/, M/xa!ul IC/xalu/ ;
many 'Syrian dia lects have a similar lui or 10/.
4.5 THE NOUN. 4.5 1 Overall view. All three dialects use roughly
the same no minal base patterns , though in a few cases phonemic
differentiation has resulted in some degree of morphological diverge nce, cf. e.g. the pattern qtll- in 1 as opposed to its equivalents
in M and C. The greatest differentiation is in the realm of morphophonemics. In what foll ows no attempt is made at exhaustiveness,
though most of the nomina l base patterns will be listed. The category " noun" includes all words susceptible of taking the a~ticle,
and this in turn subsumes at least two sub-categories, substantives
MORPHOLOGY
75
4.52 Irregular patterns. As in other areas, many OA biconsonantal nouns have becume trico nsonantal in MIC a nd fit more or
less smoothly into the regular nominal patterns: MI C/damml
' blood', lidl 'hand' (pattern qell- wi th K I -' and K, -y, (see 4.54a
~low!, laxxl ' brother" Vabbl 'father' ; this is true alsQ of Iisen/, Isenij
thIDg, less so of M/si/, C/se/. The three dialects show greater irregularity in patterning and fluctuation betwee n biconsonantalism
and triconsonantalism in other cases: M/uxut/, 1/ext/, C/exetl 'sister',
plur._ MC/xaway,. Ilxwat/ ; MJC/eseml 'name', plur. M/asiim i/,
C/ase ml/ , MIl lsa ml/ ; MIC/ebenl 'son' is largely confined to use in
sandhi lebnil 'my so n', (Jebn eHanl 'so-and-so's son'), plur. Ilbninl
(MC pI. not noted). As for MC/benet/ , Ilbentl 'girl , daughter', plur.
MC/ banat/ , J/bniit/, there is in M a more regular (and preferred)
form Ibnayya/, for wh ich J has Ibnetij; I 04 Mlisanal 'year' and
l C/magal 'woman' are truly biconsonantal, as is M/mara/, thou gh the
latter has a preferred form Imrayyaf. Note also MIC/laxl 'another',
fern . M/lux/, IC/lex/, also with longer forms M/luxra/, lC/lexxi/.
4.53 Regular patterns. (a) Reflexes of OA patterns q VII, q Viii,
q Villi. From the discussion of short vowels and a naptyxis in Chapter
3, the di.fferences in the treatments of such pattern~ should already
be famllt ar; the essen!ial facts may be summed up as follows:
(i) With sound roots, M has a base pattern "ell- where the
e is lei or lui depending al most entirely on the consonantal environment, JC have p actica lly only leI, a nd the pattern serves mostly
for singular substanti ves; hOlVever, M/weledl or Iwuledl 'children',
M/kutub/, l CJketebl 'books', a nd the plurals of color adjectives,
e.g. M/~umur/, IC/~emegl ' red'. The difference in the treatment of
final c1us!;rs in 1 as opposed to MC res ults in a different classification of base patterns : MC/wesexl 'd irty', C/najesl 'unclean', are
on the same pattern as Isekell or /~a!el/, i.e. "ell- and qall-, respectlvely ; whereas the homonymous forms in 1 belong to bases of t he
pattern qelel- a nd qalel-, respecti vely. Cf. J/ malek! ' king' (pattern '
qalel-) vs. J/ ~ a lq l 'mouth' (paitern "all-), vs. M/malek/, I ~aleg/,
Cjmalek/, I ~ a l eqj ; the leI of MC is only anaptyctic, the lei of 1 is
not. Furthermore, the -e- in such J bases as those of Inajes/ , Iza lezl
explains the feminine in - Iii (Jnajsil, Izalzi/, IlVesxij) whereas qallnouns have feminines in - /aj : l l kalba/ , ' bitch', Igamzal 'hint', Igafsal
'kick'. Some examples of "ell- qall- a nd in 1 also qhe!- and "alelnouns (last two of list):
76
MORPHOLOGY
rejel
quful
galub
gejel
qefel
qaleb
bared
gejel
qefel
qalb
,aheg
bagd
' king'
malek
malek
malek
'impure'
nages
najes
najes
'foot'
'lock'
'heart'
'month'
'cold'
~ahar
~aheg
baged
helwa
I)acya
J
helwa
hakyu
, C
helwi
hakyu
77
Ie
the first vowel In M has been dealt with in 3.33; in some cases M
has qatal- as well: ,
'onions'
'camel'
'boy'
.,M
I:>u~al
I:>a~al
jemal
walad
I:>a~al
jamal
walad
jamal
walad
'neck'
'fish'
'ara
'asga
sejra
r,ugba
S,e mca
sejga
geqba
samka
'asga
sejga
geqbi
samaki
78
J forms are not always what we would expect (whence the lei of
Isejga/, Igeqba/ ?; however, note that an expected */gaqbal would
have yielded Igeqbet1 in suffixation) and the C forms apparently
reftect, as do other C features, a mixture of Jlike features and Mosul
like ones.
There are a few qatal and qetalnouns with medial lV, though
they hark back to different OA patterns. T have noted on ly the fol
lowing, which also have K ,-y; the middle radical yields Iw/, the
final radical yields zero:
M
' light'
'remedy'
(Suwa
duwa
Qawa
dawa
dawa
'bags'
'roo ms'
junat
ebar
gu!;>a!;>
jenat
ebag
qebab
jenat
ebag
qebab
M
'rice'
'ladder'
' new (pl.)'
'old (pl.)'
temman
temman
temman
sellam
jed dad
sellam
jeddad
'ettaq
sellam
jeddad
'ettaq
'ettag
79
One C informant gives for the las t two the alte'rna nt forms Ijedadl
and /'etaq/.
(e) Nouns having a qlal patte rn in all three dialects ha rk back
to OA pattern qlllal and aqlal, rarely also to qital; as a rule, nouns
harkIng back to qilti! have qlti! in M onl y, but have been altered
through 'ima!a in J, and C a nd are discussed in (f) below. No uns
har~lllg back to qaltil have qtti! in 1, usually a lso in M, but usua ll y
qala! 111 C. The s lI1gle la rges t category in which a ll three have qtti!
IS tha; of .adJectlve plurals; on the reasons for positing a n OA pat.
tern quta! for such patterns, see 3.36 above. These include:
<;Iawa
'neecpes'
MORPHOLOGY
M
'fat'
'big'
'small'
'long'
'clean'
'broad'
'nice'
'sho rt'
'strong'
sman
sman
kbar
zgar
Ilval
n(\iif
' ral)
sman
kbag
zgag
twiil
n(\af
'ga(\
kbag
zgag
tWa I
n<;laf
'gii<;l
mliil)
qsag
mlii~
g~ar
,CJ,Wiiy
qsiig
qway
qway
snan
(weled)
frax
rd an
flan
grab
snan
wliid
frax
rdan
fla n
grab
wiad
frax
rdan
fliin
grab
'gal
'country'
blad
'gal
1)1!lag
blad
'gal
I)mag
bliid
'so-and-so'
'crow'
~l!1ar
soan
,
I
~.
.~,
80
The first three are instances of plurals harking back to (or contaminated by) OA 'aqlol form s, and Ird,ml seems to rest on an old plural
a lso, the new plural being MJC/redenj. The others hark back to
older qUlol, or, exceptionally for JC, to older qilol nouns which for
some reason have not undergone the expected 'imola ; /, gall is clearly
a borrowing from M or another gelel-dialect, while the word for
'donkey' may rest on an older, albeit unattested,lOS Ibumar/. Note
also M/zyara/, JC/zyagal 'pilgrimage' , MJC/zma l/, another term for
' donkey' . F inally, in J practically all OA qOlol nouns now have this
qlol pattern, while M preserves the lal in some and C in most such
nou ns:
'wine'
' North'
'cloak'
'three'
'day'
'illicit'
'licit'
srab
samal
'abaya
tlaOa
'gab
smal
'bayi
tla8i
nhag
!)gam
I)lal
sagab
samal
'abayi
tlati
nhag
bagam
I)alal
nhar
Qaram
balal
Isan
ll,taf
'belt'
i:tz3ffi
'underpants'
'book'
Ibas
ktab
I,tsiib
rjal
" lab
jmal
sba'
tongue'
'account'
'men'
'dogs'
'camels'
'lions'
81
MORPHOLOGY
lsin
l!)if
I)zim
Ibis
(ktab)
I,tsib
gjil
klib
jmil
lsen
Il,tef
l)zem
Ibes
kteb
(I)sab)
gjel
kleb
jmel
sbi'
sbe'
'candles'
'baskets'
'ropes'
'mountains'
sma'
sial
I,tbal
jba l
smi '
slil
l)bil
jbil
f .
sme'
slel
l)bel
jbel
The forms C/l)sabj' and J/ ktabl do not conform to the regular correspondence, but cf. .J/ ktibil 'a writing'. With K ,-y and the feminine
ending, M has the '.regular Il)caya/, J/ l)kiyyi/ or better Il)kiyi/, and
c/l)kayyil with the expected layl for lei before Iy/- As for M/dejajal
' hen, chicken', it has the same pa ttern qlol with an automatically
anaptyctic lei, but 't he JC equivalents J/jijil and Cfjeji/ now show
different patterns, though clearly harking back to a n OA form
Idijaja/ 106 Note also M/bhaml (apparently also used in C) and
J/bhim/ 'thumb' , harking back not to a qild! noun but to OA/,ibham/ ,
with the J 'imola of course still regular. The J word is now homophonous with J/bhiml 'beast of burden, donkey', and in general
the J nouns in qlil listed above are indistinguishable from those
harking back to older qalll, e.g. Inxi!1 ' palm trees', Ihlibl 'milk',
which M and C keep apart; this renders at least one or two etymologies uncertain, e.g. J/zwijl 'marriage', neither ' /zawijl nor
*/ziwajl being attested; the MC form is Izawaj/.
(g) The OA pattern qatil is represented in MJC by a pattern
qiflll, in which if is shorthand for lal alternating with unsta ble /eI
in M, lal (and occasionally zero) in C and zero (and occasionally
la/) in J. On the fate of OA lal in unstressed open syllable, cf. 3.33.
The pattern is found in ma ny common singular adjectives, a nd
some singular and some plural substantives. They include:
'heavy'
'light'
'long'
!broad'
'big'
'poor'
'milk'
'friend'
'donkeys'
'jar'
Gegi!
xaftf
tewil
faqir
balib
8qi!
xftf
!wi!
'giil
kbig
faqir
I) lib
laqil
xafif
!awi!
'agi<:!
kbig
faqir
I)alib
~adiq
~(a)diq
~adiq
I)amir
brig
I)mig
bgiq
I)(a)mig
bgiq
'\ ariQ
~ebir
82
MORPHOLOGY
. 'houses'
M
biyut
J
biyiit
'roofs'
~ !ut)
~!ui)
'hearts'
'tables'
glOb
'bastards'
'bottles'
ngu!a
!;itO!a
qlub
myuza
ngula
i?lu!a
myiiza
C
biyiit
Hot)
qlub
myuzi
ngOli
i?luli
This pattern does not seem to occur wi~h K,-y . On: C informant
gives the unusual form /I)~uyen/ 'horses, pl._ of / I)~an/, wh.ch has
an aggregate MJC/xel/ and a plural MJ/ I) ~ una/ ; my other _C informa nts recognized / I) ~uyen/, state they themselves use /xe,l! or
/I)~uni/ a nd thought the unusual form to b: "from the North. On
C/o/ for /u/ before /1)/, / q/ a nd /g/ , cf. / malel)/ In (g) above and 3.34.
(i) All three dia lects have, to a greater extent than most vane~te-'
of A rabic, preserved plurals harking back to the OA ~att~rn qalala,
with 'im ala of the final vowel (spelled with 'alif maq~lIra In CI. Ar.)
in J a nd C' most but not all corresponding singulars are adject.ves
,
' 1y qla-If
qatlall: the patterns are respective
a or M ,
on the pattern
qliill for J, and qatali for C; such plurals Include:
'lazy'
'drunk'
'tired'
'ca refree'
'thirsty'
M
ksala
skara
('aba
i?lara
-liisa
J
ksali
skagi
t'abi
i?lagi
'Iasi
C
kasali
sakagi
ta'abi
i?alagi
'atasi
'orph ans'
'pregnant'
yt.a ma
t)biila
ytiimi
I)bali
83
yatami
I)abali
For the last example C informa nts also give / I)abeli/, as though a
p atte rn qaretel with' K ,-y, cf. /zaweli/ from /zuliyi/ 'rug', and cf.
the JC singular / I)eblej. All three dialects have only / najara/ 'Christia ns'. Also note in J'( MC eq ui va lents not noted): / i)zani/ 'sad' (sing.
/ I)zin/), /myati/ 'dead' (si ng. / mayyet/), /!yabi/ 'alive' (sing. / layyeb/).
Some of the above ex~ mples a lso have plura ls in -/in/ , e.g. M/kaslanin/ ,
M/ sak ra nin/, Mj'a!!iinin/ .
(j) Reflexes of nouns on the OA pattern qalil are numerous
and va riegated. Many have a pattern qalel in all three dialects, while
all Form I participles have a regular correspondence M-qalel vs.
JC-qetel, whereas still others show the correspondence M-qatel vs.
J-q!lel and C-qiitel. Participles are discussed separately in 4.7; for
the ordinal numerals, see 4.6. In a ll cases, the e of the base pattern
is elided in the feminine, in M also with suffixes, while in JC it
is retained and stressed with pron. suif. (cf. 3.4 above). Cases where
a ll three have qatel include: MJC/ kateb/ 'clerk' /tajer/ 'merchant'
/ Iazem/ ' necessary', /wadi/ 'valley', M/ l)al)1u(\/, J/ l)al)1e9/ , C/ i)iil)1e\f/
'sour', M/ ~ 9ul/, J ~a gel/, Cf ~ i?e17, 'officer', MJC/wali/ ' provincial
governor', etc. With 'ima/a in Je but excluding participles and
ordinal numerals, we have for example:
'mosque'
'child'
'frozen'
'cold '
'corrupt'
'barefo ot'
'high'
'warm'
'dry'
' health '
'rim '
M
jame'
jiihel
ja med
bared
fased
J
jime'
jihel
jimed
biged
fised
haft
hili
I) ii ~ya
'iii
difi
yibes
'jfi
i)iSi
,iili
diifi
yabes
'iifya
C
jeme'
jehel
i,omed
belied
fesed
i)efi
'eli
defi
yebes
(not noted)
(not noted)
84
.,,
(I) Reflexes of patterns qOlllil, qilllil, qllll lil. The three dialects
ha ve the regularly expected equivalents for the common Arab~c
pattern den oting habitual or professional activity, MC-qaltal,
J-qeltli/:
'bake r'
'tailor'
M
xabbaz
xayyal
'carpenter'
najjar
'cobbler
ragga'
J
xebbaz
xiyyal
nejjag
geqqa'
C
xabbaz
xa yyal
najjag
gaqqa'
MORPHOLOGY
85
harking back to OA qlllltil, for which MJC have qelltil, with the
usual values for e; this pattern is mostly found in plurals of nOllns
ha ving qVlel in the singular:
M
'oldsters'
'clerks'
'inhabitants'
'barefoot'
'high'
siyyab
kuttab
sekkan
beffay
'ellay
J
siyyab
kettab
sekkan
(Min)
('ilin)
C
siyyab
kettab
sekkiin
beffay
'ellay
The last two exa mples, for which J seems to have only plurals in
qitlall . 109
(m)
in
kasliin
\>a\ra n
J
kes liin
i;>elgan
C
keslan
i;>elgan
86
'thirsty'
'h ungry'
'drunk'
'glad'
'atsan
'~lsa n
jo'an
sakrii n
farl)an
ju'an
sekgan
feg l)an
87
MORPHOLOGY
'etsftn
j o'an
sekgan
fegl)an
'bird , sparrow'; cf. also Jjxeggufj 'sheep', though Mjxarufj on a di fferent patte rn ; ef. a lso MJC/za'lulj 'small boy'. A special use of
this pattern, with added -jij is fou nd in the hypoeoristie form s of
certain given name~ : jbar humij (from j brahim/), jl)ammud ij (from
jahmadj, jmahmOd/, etc.), j'abbOdij (fro m any name beginning with
j'abd - j), etc.
,
Reflexes of OA patterns qartilil, maqtilil, etc. These patterns
are, in general , to ~e fo und in plurals of disyllabic singulars of wh ich
the first syllable is long (i.e, ends in V or VK). The patterns have
undergone the exp~cted 'imtila in JC, viz. are ' qrilel (mqllel) and
qarelel (//laqel el), respecti vely, though some forms with jilj a lso
occu r. That the JC 'imdla is "in the pattern" and not in the indi vidual words is sho\yn by the app lication of these patterns to plurals
of relatively recent borrowings. Some examples:
(0)
..
M
'eyebrows'
'handkerchiefs'
'tents'
cwader
structure and other com mon features; these are considered briefly
'pistols'
here.
'drums'
'rings'
wrawer
danabeg
mhabes
jwimc'
hwijeb
kfili
twider
wgiweg
dnibek
mhi bes
'schools'
madares
mdares
'snakes'
'persons'
'lands'
(nOl noted)
awfldem
arai)i
hyiyi
awadem
agai)i
(II)
'mosques'
jwamc'
hwajeb
crali
C
jawe me'
hawejeb
kafefi
caweder
(not noted)
danebek
mal)ebes
made res,
madares
hayeyi
awedem
ageQi
In the last insta nce, the singu lar is Mjarui)j, JjaMj, CjageQj but the
plural is fo rmed on! a root with K,-y, which, as in other cases (cf.
'handkerchiefs', 'sria kes') merges with the e of the pattern into
jij. The M pattern is qrdrel, but occasionall y qardlel. The C form s
show a greater regularity than in J with res pect to 'imtila; this is
true also of refl exes , of patterns qaldyil (CI. Ar. qalt'i'i1), which are
usuall y plurals of ilOuns havi ng patterns of the type K(V)KYK;
.,
j
"n
:j,
88
in such cases C often has the ex pected layl < lal before IYI (cf.
3.36a), whereas J, like M, has la/ :
'brides'
'araye~
'gaye~
'old women'
'taxes'
'ajayel
i)ariiyeb
'jayel
(\arayeb
C
'agayyes
'ajayyel
dariiyeb
89
MORPHOLOGY
/i/ :
C
bgiidda
bgadda
bagiiddi
mwa~ !a
m ~a lwa
ma\Va~1i
b~arwa
b~agwa
(not noted)
m~arwa
m~arwa
(not noted)
m ~a !wa
(1') Reflexes of OA patterns Iqarutil/, Imaqatil/ , etc. These include, by and large, plurals of disyllabic singulars of which both
syllables are long, though in J the first may be a phonemically short
vowel. As has been seen, (3.36a) there is the expected 'imcila in C,
but J has lal rather than an expecled Ii/. Some examples:
., M
,.xbiibiz
xyayi!
bZ3zin
qpiipi!
d,wiilib
dkiikin
jwarib
'bakers'
'tailors'
'cats'
'coats'
'wardrobes'
'shops'
'socks'
J
xbabil
xyayi!
"
C
xabebil
xayeyi!
bzazin
bazezin
qpapi!
dwalib
dkakin
qapepi!
dawelib
dakekin
Uawegeb)
jwarib
'pillows'
'quarters'
'scissors'
M
rnxiidid
.m/:liilil
mga,i,
mxadid
m/:lalil
C
maxedid
mal!elil
mqa ~i~
maqe~i~
(q) Reflexes of. OA patterns taqtil and taqattll!. In the three dialects, verbs of Forms II and V have regularly corresponding verbal
nouns with MJC patterns taqtil and tqette!; the latter is used for
quadriliteral verbs also. A feature of the taqtil pattern is th at it keeps
its lal in 1: MJC(tasli ml 'handing over' from Isallam/ ; Itax\Vifj
from Ixawwafl 'to frighten' or Itxawwafl 'to be frightened'; j.ta'liml
from j'allaml 'to teach' or It'allaml 'to learn'; M/tkeffer/, C/tkeffegl
from Ikaffar/, Ikaffagl 'to curse'; J/tmeddedl from Itmaddadl 'to
stretch out', J/tyebbesl from Iyabbasl 'to dry' and Ityabbas/ 'to dry
(intr.)'; J/ txellil from Ixallal ' to put'; M/ddebbecl from Idabbacl
'to stamp one's foot'; M/tme(jyegl from Itmai)yag/, 'be bored, annoyed' and Ima(\yagl 'to bore, annoy'; and in absolute construction,
Imtalfal)a tteffe/:ll 'round as an apple (cheek)' , Imkal)l)ala tke/:ll)ell
90
MORPHOLOGY
J
weQed
wel)di
Onen
Oenten
M
waQed
weMa
Onen
Benten
(m .)'
(f.)'
(m ,),
(f.)'
tlaO
art;>a'
xames
tliiOa
arQa'a
xamsa
xamsi
arf?a'tiyam
xamstiyam
settiyam
xamsti y~m
...
sabe'tiyam
9mentiyam
tese'tiyam
'asertiyam
settiyam
sabe'tiyiim
Smentiyam
"
setti
sab'a
1man
tmeni
tese'
tes'a
'aSeg
'asga
tlattiyam
arf?a 'tiyam
xamstiyam
settiyam
sabe'tiyam
tese'tiyam
tmentiyam
tese 'tiyam
'asegtiyiim
,'asegtiyam
tnen
when it occurs, usually detaches the ItI from its etymological place
and joins it to the noun: Ixams tiyamf. 110 Moreover, the nom inal
tliiOi
agb'a
'asra
tlattiyam
sett
sabe l
tenten
' ten' are listed below; in each column, shape A is on the left, shape
B on the right, and shape C is listed separately after them, attached
to MJC/iyiiml 'days' .
J
tlaO
agba'
xams
laser
sett
setti
sab'
sab'a
Oman
Omini
tes'
tes'a
'aseg
'asga
tlattiyiim
agi;>a'tiyiim
C
wel)ed
wel)di
On reflexes of OA/fardl and their use, see 4.9 below. Many nouns
admit both the dua l and the use of 'two' with the plural, e.g. M/betenl
or IOnen ebyOtl or IbyOt eOnenl 'two houses'; details and differences
setta
sab'a
Smiinya
tesla
'one
' one
'two
' two
sett
sabe'
Sman
tese'
91
C
tlat
arba'
xames
tHiti
arba'a
xamsi
92
da' as
Ona'as
\laqa'as
ar!;>at;\'as
ida's
Ona 's
\!etta's
ag !;>ata',
xr!1u ~ \a' as
xrpe~ta' s
!e\\a'as
!!;>a'Was
~!;>ata'$
8f11Cnpl'as
Ol]1enta's
! ~ a ' ta' as
t~a!a's
ida'es
tna'es
t! ana'es
ar!;>ata'es
xal]1e!(a'es
!eqa'es
!!;>a(')!A'es
(l]1an(a'es
t!a(')\a'e,
(c) The tens from 'twenty' to 'ninety' also have a single shape
each and exhibit mostly reg ular correspondences :
'esrin
'esgin
tHiSin
t1i9in
geb'in
'esgin
tlOtin
arba'in
arba'in
xamsin
scttin
xamsiri
setOn
sab'in
Omanin
xemsin
settin
seb'ln
9m.inin
sab'in
tamenin
les' in
tes'in
les'in
'thousand'
'two thousand'
'three thousand'
'alef
alfen
, ' t1attalaf
alf
elfen
tlattalaf
alef
alfen
tlattaliif
Before a numbered noun, M/miya(, JC/miyi(, and compounds ending in them have the alternant MJC/mit / : 1mit felsl 'a hundred fels ',
Ixamesmit felsl 'five hundred fe ls'. ' Hundreds' beyond two are formed
with numerals of shape A, 'thousands' beyond two with numerals
of shape C attached to MC/tiilar/, Iltalar/.
4.62 The ordinals. The ordinals from 'second ' to ' tenth' are on
the pattern qatel in M, qftel in J and qatel in C, in the last case without the expected 'imala. They are:
~ ena 's
93
MORPHOLOGY
Oani
OaleO
rabe'
xames
sades
sabe"
9amen
mni
9i1e9
gibe' .
ximes
sides
Lani
talet
rabe'
xames
sades
sabe'
tase'
'aser
lise'
tarnen
tase'
'iSeg
'aseg
sibe'
9imen
These call for no special comment beyond the J form for 'forty'
which can easily ha ve developed from ' /agb'inl > ' /ageb'inl >
Igeb'inl , and the J 'imiila in 'thirty' and 'eighty' is discussed in 3.36a.
Beyond these, the 'hundreds' and 'thousands' have the following
form s:
latter case the article is never present: (9a le8 yoml 'the third day' ,
19a1e9 lelal 'the third night'. As for 'first', MJ C/awwall is used in
this latter constructiQD; it may also occur in the adjective construction , though in that case there is the more common variant Me
f~minine
miya
'two hundred'
milen
'three hundred'
tla9miya
J
miyi
miten
tla9miyi
C
miyi
milen
t1atmiyi
.1.
~
.~
94
95
MORPHOLOGY
to say that all verbs admit of both, cf. 4.73 below) but the phonemic
distinction is retained fully in the three forms (m.s., f.s ., and pl.)
only by C; in J and M, it is to some extent blurrecj. The details follow.
(i) For Form II, from the verb ' to hand, over', perfect base
MJC-sallam, imperfect base MJC-sallem, we have in M:
'a clerk'
'having written'
M
kateb
kateb
'a mosque'
jame'
jame'
qabel
qabel
J
kateb
keteb
jime'
jeme'
qiibel
qebel
C
kateb
keteb
jeme'
jeme'
qabel
qebel
With hollow roots (KI-y or IV) the second radical yields /y/ in MJC
but while the a of M-qatel is unchanged, the e of JC-qetel yie lds
/ay/ : M/ sfiyel/ , JC/sayyel / ' transferring' (Syf), M/dayer/, JC/ dayyeg/
'going around' (dIVr, dIVg) . With geminate roots (K2 and K, identical)
the JC patterns are unmodified, but the masc. sing. of M exhibits a
.collapsing of K2 and K, into a single phoneme: from /zbb we get
M /I:tiib/; fern. Il)abba/ , but JCfl)ebeb/ fern. / l)ebbi/ . This M form 114
is typical of gelet and Beduin dialects, and I have noted it also among
the Negev semi-nomads, while the JC forms are the ones found
throughout the qe/tu area and in the sedentary dialects as a whole.
(b) Form I passive participles have the pattern maqliil in MC
and meqtiil in J and exhibit no differentiation beyond the regular
phonetic ones in MJC; no modifications occur in geminate or hollow roots (MC/mahbub/, J/mel)bub/ 'beloved', MCfmabyu'/, J
/ mebyu'/'sold') or with KI-IV roots, MC/ mawzun/ 'weighed', though
3.37b and note 86. With K,-y the pattern is maqtil
on J/muwzun/ see
e.g. MJCfmaswi/ 'fried', fern. M/maswiya/, J/meswiyi/ , Cfmaswiyi/.
4.72 Participles of Forms II and III. These have, in MJC, the
regularly expected patterns involvi ng a preformative /m/- bound to
the base of the imperfect fo r the active participle and to the base of
the perfect for the passive participle. A ll three dialects distinguish
the active participle pattern from ' the passive pattern (which is not
m. S.
AP
PP
. msallem
!./ msallam
f.s.
pI.
msalma
msalmin
msalma or
msallama
msalmin or
msallamin
Thus the distinction between active and passive is optionally retained in the fern .: sing. and in the plural. In J, on the other hand,
we get:
pI.
f.s.
m.s.
AP
PP
msallem
msallam
msalmi
msalma
mselmin
mselmin
Thus the distinction is lost in the plural, but retained in the fern .
sing. because of the different allomorphs of the fern. suff., depending on whether the base ends in -eK or in -eK (cf. 4.32 above). In C
the distinction is retained throughout:
m.s.
AP
PP
msallem
msallam
f.s.
msalmi
msallami
pI.
msalmln
msallamin
Form III participles behave enti rely analogously: ' fro m the verb
'to forgive' , perfect base MJC-sdma/z, imperfect base MJC-sdme/z,
we get the masc. sing. AP MJCfmsameh/ , the masc. sing. PP MJC
/ msiimal:t/ and fem. and plur. forms exactl y anj'logous to the ones
listed above.
(ii) There are no modifications for hollow or geminate roqts; 115
with K 3-y roots, the last radical merges with the last pattern element
so as to yield /i/ in the AP and /a/ in the PP masc. sing.: MJC/mxalli/
'putting', /rnxalla/ 'having been put' (xly). The fern. sing. of J in
such cases obliterates the gender distinction in the AP (fmxalli/ is
also f.s.) but retains it in the PP (J/ mxelliiyi/ is the f.s.) and rein-
"
-~
.,
96
97
MORPHOLOGY
98
99
MORPHOLOGY
gelel-dialects so far examined have lost it. Thus both M and J have
lakall and laxa51 q.v. below: Iserabl 'to drink', Ikesarl 'to break',
IketalJ 'to kill', Isema'i 'to hear' , Ige'adl 'to sit', Ise'all 'to be lit',
Ige!a'i 'to cut', /,erafl 'to know', I<!ehak/ 'to laugh', Ilezaml 'to hold',
Ile'abl 'to play', Ide'fa'i 'to push', Itefalf 'to spit'., I'e~a rl 'to squeeze,
press', Ihesabl 'to : reckon', fi!,esalJ 'to wash', 15ekarl 'to mention',
r egadl 'to tie', ani:! many more. As for the two perfect base patterns
in C, they may be illustrated by the inflection of I katabl 'he wrote'
and Ilebesl 'he wore', as follows:
'he wrote'
'he wore'
'he grew'
ketab
lebas
kul;>ar
katab
labas
kabag
katab
lebes
kebeg
M
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
Ipi.
2pi.
3pi.
k(e)tabet
k(e)tabet
k(e)tabti
ketab
ketbat
k(e)tabna
k(e)tabtu
ketbaw
k(u) 1;>aret
k(u) 1;>aret
k(u)1;>arti
ku1;>ar
ku1;>rat
k(u)1;>arna
k(u)l;>artu
ku1;>raw
ktabtu
ktabt
ktabti
katab
katbet
ktabna
ktabtem
katbu
Is.
katabtu
katabet
katabti
katab
katabet
katabna
katabtem
katabu
2m .s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
1pi.
2pi.
3pi.
Ibestu
Ibeset
Ibesti
lebes
lebset
Ibesna
Ibestem
lebsu
.
,I
!
affixes are split in ways already described (3.5, 4.2). The anaptyctic
vowel preceding K, is lei, though there is some tendency among
M speakers to replace it by lui when E is lui : M/te'rufl or Itu'ruf
'she knows', Iteknusl or Ituknusl 'she sweeps'. Inflecti on of the
base MlC-ftab 'to open' is as follows:
I
. .'-..
100
M
ekteb
e[(etbi or
ketbi
eketbu or
.' ketbu
C
m .S.
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3r.s.
IpJ.
2pJ.
3pJ.
aflab
teflal)
teflal)in or
tfet l)in
yeftab
teftal:J
neftal)
teftabu n or
tfell)un
yeflal)On or
yfetbun
aftab
teftab
tfc tb en
aflab
teflab
teftabin
yeflal1
teftal)
nefta b
tfetl)o n
yefta b
teftal)
neftal)
teftai)un
yfetbon
yfetbun
M
Is.
2m. s.
2r.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
IpJ.
2p J.
3pJ.
akteb
tekteb
tketbin
yekteb
tekteb
nekteb
tkelbOn
yketbun
J
a'rur
tc'ruf
t'urrin
ye'ruf
tc'ruf
ne' rur
t'urron
y'urfUn
f.s.
pJ.
akteb
tekteb
tketben
yekteb
tekteb
nekteb
tketbon
yketbon
101
MORPHOLOGY
lui, (e.g.
M-'ruf
C
akteb
tek teb
tektebin
yekteb
tekteb
nekteb
tektebOn
yektebOn
J
kteb
kteb i
C
ekteb
ktebi
ktebu
klebu
With base vowel ,(ul in M, the forms are analogous to the above
except that there is a prefixed lui instead of lei. With base vowel lal,
the JC forms are exactly analogous to the above, but M again shows
the co-existence of two systems, o ne eliding lal in unstressed open
syllable (yielding fO~j11s analogous to the above) and one retaining it:
m.s.
f. s.
pJ.
eftab
ertabi or ereti)i or feti)i
eftai)u or efetbu or fetbu
When object suffixes are added to the imperative, there are largely
predictable modifications th at 'may be summari zed as follows :
(i) In the mase. sing., no modification in J, stress shift with
M
eketba
ektebha
C
(e)ktebu
(e)kteba
J
ktebu
kteba
f.s.
f.s.
pI.
pI.
+ 3m.s.
+ 3r.s.
+ 3m.s.
+ 3r.s.
(e)ketbi
(e)ketbiha
(e)ketbO
(e)ketbuha
ketbinu
ketbiya
ketbunu
ketbuwa
ketbenu
ketbiha
ketbonu
ketbOha
; ;
102
f .
MORPHOLOGY
bnetu
bnet
bneti
bana
banet
bnena
bnetem
banu
banetu
banet
baneti
bana
banet
banena
banetem
banD
M
Is.
2m .s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
I pI.
2pl.
3pl.
103
abni
a,bga
tebni l tebga
tebnin tebqin
.~ "
yebni yebga
tebni teega
nebni nebga
tebniin tebqiin
yebni n yebgiin
abni
tebni
tebnen
yebni
tebn i
nebni
tebno n
yeb non
C
abqa
tebqa
tebqen
yebqa
tebga
nebqa
tebgon
yebgon
abni
tebni
tebnen
yebni
tebni
nebni
tebnon
yebnon
abga
tebga
tebqen
yebqa
tebga
nebqa
tebqon
yebqon
, i
b(e)net
b(e)net
b(e)neti
bena
benat
b(e)nena
b(e)netu
benaw
b(u)qet
b(u)qet
b(u)geti
buga
bugat
b(u)qena
b(u)getu
bugaw
3pl. the pron. suff. is 101 rather than lui. In the other persons there
is the eXpected merger of the pattern element a with the radical y
into Ie/. As in tbe sound roo t, C has a number of Kry verbs on the
pattern "elel, though here again it appears that they have optiona l
aiternants in qalal. Thus fro m msy ' to walk' there is C/mesi/, but
also Imasa/ ; in the qelel paradigm we get: Imsitu/, ImSit/, Imsiti/,
Imesil, Imesyet/, Imsina/, ImSitem/, ' /meSyul (3pl. not actually noted).
The second pattern element e thus merges wit h y into /if (Iii in unstressed final position in the 3m.s.) and is zeroed-o ut (with Iyl for
the third rad ical) in the 3f.s. and (p resumably) in the 3pl. As for
the imperfect base pattern qlE/, it yields two phonemic shapes that
are not predictable: one in which E merges with y into Iii, and both
are zeroed-out befo re the VII suffixes; and a seco nd in which
is
m.s.
f.s.
pI.
ebni
ebni
ebga
ebqi
ebou ebgu
J
bni
bne
bno
C
bga
bge
bgo
ebni
bne
bno
ebqa
bqe
bgo
Because of the different syll able structure, M has no optional alte rnan ts without the'prefixed le/- . In J, the final vowels, being stressed,
have retained their older quality (cf. 4.21 b(iv)) : there is the usual
alternation before - fla: J/bninul 'build (m.s.) it (m.s.)', Ibnenul
' build (f.s.) it (m:s.)" but Ibnihal 'bu ild (m.s. and f.s.) it (m .s.)';
Ibnonul 'build (pl.) it (m.s.)', but Ibniihal ' build (pl.) it (f.S.),."7 .
(d) Verbs witl" K,-y and K,-w exhibit no modifications in the
perfect, except that with K ,-,v M fiuctuates between Iwe/- and
Iwu/- ; M/wuga'i and Iwega'i 'he fell', JCfwaqa 'l ; M/yebas/, JC
Iyabasl ' he dried (intr.)'. There are, however, a number of modifications in the imperfect, all connected with the combination of the
consonantal preformatives with the initial y or IV of the base; in
JC, the preformative la/- causes no modification. In M and C the
combination K + IV yields MI Kol and C/ Kiil throughout, whereas
in J pho nemic IWh occurs througho ut and the resulting clusters
.''''
104
IKweKK I
IC/amagl 'to order' . Besides the fact that the first radical yields
throughout. II B
M
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f. s.
IpI.
2pJ.
3pJ.
Imperatives
aga'
I
awqa'
C
awqa'
toga'
Hig'jn
yoga'
tewqa'
tiiqa'
tweq'en
yewqa'
tiiqa'In
toga'
noga'
tewqa'
yiiqa'
tiiqa'
tag' un
newqa'
tweq'on
tOqa'un
yog'iin
yweq'on
yiiqa'iin
nuqa'
m.S.
M
oga'
f.s.
pI.
og'i
og'u
M
oybas
tebas
tobsjn
yobas
tobas
nebas
tobsiin
yobsiin
phonemic zero initially, the first two verbs exhibit a number of special
features, while the third behaves more like sou nd root verbs. In the
perfect, the C inflection shows no modification except for the automatic assimi lation of the Idl of laxadl to a following ItI ; the I inflection
shows a similar assimilation (/ot/ > Itt/) and, in addition, has a stable
initial lal even in unstressed syllable ; in M, the verbs 'to eat' and 'to
take' have a perfect base qatal rather than the normal qelal, though I
am told that one can occasionally hear lekall and lexa51 as well;
the verb 'to order' has the normally expected qelal, with e yielding
lui before 11111. Thus M/akitlet/, ICfakaJtul 'r ate', M/nklat/, I Cfakletl
'she ate', etc. M/ur[laret/, IC/amagtul 'r ordered', M/Ur[lrat/, IC/a mgetl
'she ordered'. As for the imperfect, the first two of the three verbs
have, as in most dialects not a base qlEI but a base aqlE/, with the a of
the pattern and the ' of the root merging into lii/, and the E yielding
lui in M and lei in JC:
wqe'
wqe'i
wqe'u
While there are several such verbs with K,-IV <M/wu~all, Ilwa~all
'he arrived', M/ wugaf/, Ilwaqafl ' he stood up', and perhaps half
a dozen morel only M/yebas/, Ilyabasl has been noted for K,-y.
The imperfect is, in M, analogous to that of K,-IV, i.e., has leland in I there is an irregularity whereby KyKV yields not */ KeyK VI,
but I KeKV/ ; the C imperfect has not been noted:
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3r.s.
IpJ.
2pJ.
3pJ.
105
MORPHOLOGY
I
aybas
tebas
tyebson
yebas
tebas
nebas
tyebson
yyebson'
<el Verbs with roots K,-' seem to include, in Form I, only three
verbs, MJC/akal1 'to eat', MJ/axao/, Cfaxadl 'to take', and M/ ur[lar/,
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
I pI.
2pJ.
3pl.
akul
lakul
taklin
yakul
takul
nakul
tiikliin
yakliin
akel
takel
taklon
yakel
takel
nakel
taklon
yaklon
akel
takel
takJjn
yakel
takel
nakel
tiikliin
yakJfm
m. s.
f.s.
pI.
ukul
,
ukli
uklu
kel
keli
kelu
kel
keli
kelu '
As for the third verb, its imperfect has a regular base '1IEI, with
yielding lui in M and lei in IC: M /tu'r[lur/, JC/te'meg/, Ilt'emgon/,
Cfte'megiinf. However, in the 1st sing. I has lamegj; imperatives seem
.,'i
~,
106
M
galli
gallatli
galloli
tgulli
gulli
gullili
gull uli
J
qalli
qelletli
qell oli
tqelli
qelli
qelleli
qelloli
107
MORPHOLOGY
C
qall i
qalletli
qalluli
tqelli
qelli
qellili
qelluli
Other forms of the imperfect and forms with the other object pron.
suff. behave analogously. One can occasionally hear such fuller
forms as M/gulilij.
(g) The verb 'to come' must, as elsewhere, be treated separately.
The perfect has a monosyllabic base in lC, but both monosyllabic
and disyllabic variants in M in the 3rd pers. forms:
M
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
I pI.
2pl.
3pl.
det
jet
' jeti
eja or ja
ejat or jatti
jena
jetu
ejaw or jawwi
1
jitu
jit
jiti
ja
jet
jina
jitem
jo
C
jitu
j it
jiti
jii
jet
jina
jitem
jo
The M forms /iawwij and /ialtij are unusual, and may have developed
from sandhi forms , e.g. */jawelyom/ > */jawwelyoml > Ijawwilyoml
'they came today'; with suffixes, the anomalies of the M 3rd pers.
disappear: Ijakl 'he came to you', Ijatakl 'she came to yo u', /iokl
'they came to you. 120 The imperfect conjugates as follows:
'!
M
1s.
2m .s.
2f.s .
3m.s ..
3f.s.
Ipl.
2pl.
3pl.
,aji
teji
tejin
yeJ I
teji
neji
tejun
yjun
1
aJI
teji
tejen
yeJI
teji
ne]1
tejon
yjon
C
aji
teji
tejen
yeJI
teji
neji
tejon
yjon
M
>addet
saddot
saddeti
sadd
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
1
seddetu
seddot
seddeti
sadd
C
saddotu
saddet
saddeti
sadd
.,
I
J,
"
~
-.
.~
lOS
3f.s.
I pI.
2pl.
3pl.
saddat
saddena
sadd;;tu
saddaw
saddet
seddena
seddetem
saddu
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
saddet
saddena
saddetem
saddu
M
. asedd
tsedd
t'eddin
ysedd
tsedd
nsedd
tseddun
yseddun
1
asedd
tsedd
tsedden
ysedd
tsedd
nsedd
tseddon
yseddon
C
asedd
tsedd
tseddin
ysedd
tsedd
nsedd
tseddun
yseddun
Is.
2m.s.
M
kamlllalet
kamma let
1
kemmaltu
kemmalt
kammalti
kammal
kammelat or
kamlat
kammalna
kammaltu
kamrnelaw or
kamlaw
I pI.
2pl.
3pl.
The imperfect base behaves much as in the sound root, except for
the fact that K2 and K3 are never separated (the pattern is qEII instead of ql EI) and that the base vowel, which may be lal, lei, and in
M also lui is not necessaril y lal when K2K3 arc pharyngeals (e.g.
M/ygul,ll,l/, l Cjyqel,ll,l1 'he coughs').
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s
Ipl.
2pl.
3pl.
109
MORPHOLOGY
kemma lti
kammal
kamlet
kammalti
kammal
kammalet
kemmalmi
kem maltem
kamlu
ka mmaltem
kammalu
ka~'malna
As for the imperfect, taking the root kllli aga in and for [ul-coloring,
in M also the r7?t 'mr ' to build', we get:
(
I
,
I
M
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
I pI.
2pl.
3pl.
akammel
tkammel
tkamlin
ykammel
tkammel
nkammel
. tkamlun
ykamliin
kammaltu
ka llllllalet
n'ammur
t'amrun
y'amrun
1
akammel
tkammel
tkemlen
ykammel
tkammel
nkammel
tkemlon
ykem lon
C
akammel
tkammel
tkamlin
ykammel
tkam mel
nka mmel
tka mlun
ykamlun
a'ammur
t'ammur
t'amrin
y'ammur
t'ammur
M
ykamla
yka mmelhum
kamla
1
ykemmelu
ykemmelem
kemmelu
C
yka mmelu
ykammelem
kammelu
JIO
, I
III
MORPHOLOGY
I
(
I
J
Is.
njer a~et
nejral!tu
C
njara!)tu
.,
1
112
2m .s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
IpJ.
2pJ.
3pJ.
njeritl)et
njera!)ti
njera!)
njerl)at
nxul;>aset
nxul;>asti
nxul;>as
nxul;>sat
njera~ na
nx ut.>a~na
njera!)tu
njer!)aw
nxul;>ast u
nxuf;>$aw
nejra!)t
nejral:I!i
njara!)
njar!)et
nejral)na
nejra!)tem
njar!)u
113
MORPHOLOGY
with prefixed n-) MJC/dazz/ 'he sent' , /ndaz'z/ 'h e was sent' ; however, the imperfect base is identical with the perfect base: MJC
/yendazz/ 'he will be sent', MCjyendazziin/ , J/yendezzon/ 'they will
njara!)et
njara!)ti
njara!)
njara!)et
njara!)na
nja ral)tem
njara1)u
be sent'.
!
(d) With hollow roots, the perfect base is rdated to that of Form
I: M/dar/ 'he turned (tra ns.), /ndfu/ 'he tu fn'ed (intr.)'; however,
the /a/ is extended to the 1st and 2nd pers. a's well (> /a/ when unstressed in J), and the subject pron. suffixes are preceded by /e/ in
the perfec t as in KrY and gem inate roots;
Is.
2m .s.
2f.s .
3m.s.
3f.s.
I pI.
2pJ.
3pJ.
element unless the -VII suffix is present, in which case stress is o n 17,
..,
M
ndaret
ndaret
nd areti
ndar
ndara t
ndarena
ndaretu
ndaraw
J
ndagetu
ndaget
ndageti
ndag
ndaget
ndagena
ndagetem
ndagu
C
ndogetu
ndaget
ndagoti
ndag
ndaget
ndagena
ndagetem
ndag u
,
I
M
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
IpJ.
2pJ.
3pJ.
a njerel)
tenjere!)
tenjerl)in
yenjere!)
tenjere!)
tenxul?~in
nenjerel).
nenxul;m$
anxu9u$
tenxu I;>us
yenxuQus
tenxuQus
anjare!)
tenjare!)
tenjer!)en
yenj are!)
tenjarel)
nenjare!)
tenjer!)on
yenjer!)on
C
a njere!)
tenjereh
tenjer!)in
yenjere!)
tenjere!)
nenjere!)
tenjer!)iin
yenjerl)iin
The same base pattern is used in the imperfect : M/a ndar/ , JCjandag!,
M/yendariin/ , J/yendagon/ , C/yendagiinj.
4.86 Form VIII. (a) This form is in many respects similar to
the preceding: the perfect base pattern is based on Form I, fro m
which it differs merel y by the insertion of t- between K, and K,; .
however, it bears no regular semantic relation to Form I verbs of
the same root. The perfect base is thus M-qtetaf, JC-qtatal. The pattern
elements behave regularly, whic h means illle,. alia that there is in J
an initial morphophonemic KKK cluster due to the elision of the
first a; this cluster splits in the regular fashion into /KeKKf. Thus
(for [uJ-coloring in M, e.g. fHuQar/ , cf. Malai ka, 1963, p. 59.) from
film, the paradigm of the verb 'to understand ' is as follows:
Is.
2m .s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
M
ftehamet
ftehamet
fteha mti
fteham
J
fet ham tu
fethamt
fetha mti
ftaham
C
ftahamtu
ft.hamet
ftahamti
ftaham
, .
114
MORPHOLOGY
115
'.
3f.s.
I pI.
2pl.
3pl.
ftehmat
ftehamna
ftehamtu
ftehmaw
ftahmet
fethamna
fethamtem
ftahmu
ftahamet
ftahamna
ftahamtem
ftahamu
the 1st and 2nd pers, subject pron. suff. : from .fr (.fg) M /~fa rr/,
JCMaggl 'he grew pale', MMarret/, Jhfeggetu/, C/~faggetul '1 grew
pale'; M /ye~farr/, JC/ye~failgl 'he grows pale', etc,; similarly M/lra55/,
JCJlgassl 'he became deaf' , No roots with weak KI or K, and no
geminate roots
The imperfect base pattern is again similar to Form VII, i.e. qtete/
in MC and qtatei in J, with the same stress variations as in the Form
VII imperfect. The second e of M is, in this pattern, subject to [u]coloring, which in turn also modifies the first e to luI (cf. 3.52a);
in JC sg/ behaves exactly as does film:
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3r.s.
Ipl.
2pl.
3pl.
aftehem
astugu!
teftehem
testugu!
teftehmln te,tug!in
yeftehem
yestugu !
teftehem . testugu!
neftehem
nestugu!
teftehmun testug!un
yeftehmun yestug!iin
aft ahem
teftahem
teftehmen
yeftahem
teftahem
neftahem
teftehmon
yeftahmon
aftehem
teftehem
teftehmln
yeftehem
teftehem
neftehem
teftehmiin
yeftehmun
(
i
hav~
this respect. Perhaps the most co mmon of these modifiers are what
we may call the " present markers," i.e. the morpbemes J-qad, C-qa,
M-da, and gd'ed: Some details on their morphophonemics and
function follow .
(i) [n J and C, the imperfect may be preceded by the morpbemes J-qad and C-qa to specify, roughly speaking, present time
and non-contingency, [n J the allomorphs are /qad/ before the /a/of the 1st sing., /qa/ with gemination of a following t or II before
KV, /qa/ in other cases;12' in C tbere is /qa/ througbout with optional /'I in the 1st sing, : J/qadamsi/, C/qa{,)amsijl" 'I'm walking',
J/qattemsi/, C/qatemsi/ 'she's walking', J/qayemsi/, C/qayem ~i/ ' he's
walking'; JC/qatgid/ 'she wants', /qayqul/ 'he says'. This morpheme
seems always absent when an imperfect is syntactically d'ependent
on a preceding verb, JC/qaygld yemsi/ 'he wants to walk',
(ii) In M, there is a (relatively infrequent?) marker /ga' ed/
preceding the imperfect with a function similar to that of the JC
116
MORPHOLOGY
117
why don't you wri(e me the receipt so I can go' ; I~!abru yam'awdin!
dogfu dafahhemkum/ i30 'wait, please, stop so I can explain'. From
one C informant I have similar uses of Ida/, perhaps under M influence: Ijitu da'is~fakl or /jitu asiifakl or /iitu !)attanasOfakl ' I came
to see you'; and l~aketOlak hale~kayyi date'gef sejjaweb/, or I ~at
tante'gefl ' I told you this story so you know what to answer'. My
other C informants use I ~attal, I ~attan/, or II.lattani/, a nd in J only
II)ettil seems to' He' used, with Idal restricted to the optative use just
may not be clearly marked, cf. Idafahhemkuml :above, and the need
idaf. Even more striking is the fact that M/dal serves a number of
other funCti ons, some of which are filled by a IC morpheme Ida/,
on which see (b) below.
(iii) Other Mesopotamian sedentary dialects so far investigated
(e) There is a n additional optative morpheme MIC-xal/{i) preposed to the 1st 'and 3rd persons of the imperfect with allomorph s
as illustrated by the following: MJ C/xa llinaml ~ I et him slee p',
Ixalletnaml 'let her sleep', MC/xallinamOn/, J/xallinamonl 'let them
sleep',. MJC/xalli'anaml ' let n;e sleep', Ixallennam/, Iet us sleep'. In
the first person this may precede Ida/- as indicated above: Ixaldanaml
'let me sleep', Ixaldannaml 'let us sleep'. The reduction of gemi nation is normal and automatic before KY: MJC/xaltektebl 'let her
write' . The fully inflected imperative of MJC/xallal is used in a similar sense, though only when addressing, and making a request of,
a specific person: Ixallini a naml '(you there) let me sleep'.
(d) All three dialects have a preposed Imal with the 2nd person
In
have a present mar ker of some sort, as seems to be the case with
1
...
,
I
118
MORPHOLOGY
the shorter forms are no doubt derived. Malaika, 1963, p. 62, gives
for M the future markers / ral)/ , Ilal)l and {hassa/.
(g) It has been seen that / Ial plus the 2nd person of the imperfect
serves as negation of the imperative: Ilatnami 'don't sleep'. There
are a number of additional uses of {Ia/ with the imperfect, notably
in expressions implying apprehension or doubt: M{ma'arldak etsafer
batta laY?lr 'alek sil 'I don' t want you to leave lest something happen
to you'. The foregoing could also occur without Il)atta/, apparently
with the same meaning; cf. also M/abu ?aber, layedrukna Iwaket/
'A. S., (I'm afraid) time may run out on us'; J/wha5a Ixellag laykOn
yestal)i/ 'and that guest may feel shy'. Another use of Ila{ is to underscore the apodosis of a tern poral or conditional sentence: {madam
za'imna I'amln belwujOd, lay~lr e!'eraq janna men jannat 'adanl 'as
long as our trusted leader is alive, Iraq will be a garden of Eden'.
This may be limited' to higher styles and is, at any rate, not a true
verbal prefix: Iwda'tak lal'eraq Y?lr jannat 'adanl 'you can be sure'31
Iraq ,,,ill become a Garden of Eden'.
(iI) In C, there is a preposed Iken/ accompanying the perfect
which does not seem to result in a meaning contrasting with that
of the plain perfect : /sme'tu kenqalu hekkil '[ heard that they said
so', apparently same as /sme'tu qalu hekki{. At any rate this sets
C apart from M and J, and again marks the similarity of C with
the Mosul and Anatolian dialect '32
4.9 OTHER MORPHEME CLASSES. 4.91 Determination markers.
(a) All three dialects have, in slightly different shapes, the characteristically Mesopotamian 'indetermination marker', M/fared/, J/fagad/,
C/fagedl and MJC{fadd{. Its presence contrasts fairly clearly with
that of the article III or other determination marks, but the degree
to which it contrasts wi th absence of any mark is yet to be determined. It occurs before singular nouns (M/jani fadxabarl and /jani
xaba rl ' [ got word') but also before dual and plural nouns and before numerals : M/fadyomen tlaSal 'a couple or three days', J/ kanu
fagad eSnen ?edqan/ 'there were two friend s', M/fared-weld eSnen
ezgarl 'two little boys', M/fared-cam I)aja/ 'a couple of things'. Its
presence seems most common and most stable in expressions such
as M/faredwal)edl 'someone', J/fagadwel)ed/, Cjfagedwel)ed/ 'someone', M/ faredsi/, / fad s!/, IfaSS//, J/fagad sen/, Cjfagedsel ' something',
M/fadmarra/ 'once', / fadyom{ 'one day' (both in beginnings of
I'
119
.' .
120
M
eli
elak
e1ec
ela
elha
Is.
2m .s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3r. s.
Ipl.
2pl.
3pl.
On the use of
elna
elkum
elhum
L
1
lIeni
lIek
lick
lIenu
lIeha
lIena
Ilekem
lIehem
C
el i
elak
elki
elu
ela
e1na
elkem
elem
'
..
,
MORPHOLOGY
, ,
121
122
MORPHOLOGY
Is.
2m.s.
2f.s.
3m.s.
3f.s.
Ipl.
2pl.
3pl.
M
'alayya
'alek
'a le~
'ah~
'aleha
'alena
'alekum
'a.lehum
J
'Iayyi
'Iek
'Ieki
'lenu
'liha
'lena
'Iekem
'Iehem
C
'alayyi
'alek
'aleki
'alenu
'alayya
'alena
'alekem
'alayyem
The form /,a/ occurs before the article, e.g. /,alga'/ 'on the ground',
i. q. /,alalga'/ , but also in the fixed formula /,a bal/ as in e.g. MJC
/,abali/ 'it seems or seemed to me', /,abalak/ 'you (one) would think',
/,abal axiik/ 'your brother thinks', etc.
(e) The morpheme men has the allomorphs / men/ before KV
and / mn/ before V or KK with, in the latter case, regular anaptyxis:
MICjmenbetna/ 'from our house', / mnelbet/ 'from the house'; before V there is / men/ with intervening /'/ : /men'al)mad/ 'fro m A.' .
With suffixes, M and C have the allomorph /menn/ (with automatic
loss of geminatio n before KV) whereas J, as with L, has a fo rm
with initial gemination: MC/ menni/, J/ mmenni/ 'from me' M/menkum/ l / mmenkem/, C/ menkem/ 'from you (pl.)'. Note the composite
forms MJCjmnen/ 'from where', M/menni/ (and / menna/, offering
an instance of the rare /a/-/a/ contrast in final position, cf. / menna/
'from him') JCjmnoni/ 'from here, this way'. In MJC, / men/ also
occurs before verbs: M/ mensafna gal/ 'when he saw us, he said .. .';
M/~a rla hwaya mensafna/ 'it's a long time since he's seen us', and
analogously in JC.
(d) The three dialects have a morpheme 'elld which has the allomorphs /'end/ before V and, in M, also /,ed/ before KV: MJC/'endi/
' chez moi', M/,edna/, JC/,endna/ 'chez nous'; forms without / n/
may also, more rarely, be heard in JC, and forms with /dd/ before V
occasionally occur in M (e.g. /,eddif) though my informants consider them provincial; cf. also M/,edman/, J/,endmani/ 'chez qui'.
123
,
<
-~I
I,
125
article:
jhiida kaleb malna ger lagwa belbetl 'that dog of ours is nothing
but trouble in the house'
jasu-jii Ifallai:l dabb mes!):! maletu we nhazamj 'so the gardener threw
away his spade and ran off'
126
127
Ixa<)ar malna qayzid yom waga yoml 'our vegetables are increasing
from day to day'
Ihada mudir mal pasportat l3 ' sawwali fadlagwal 'the man in charge
of passports gave me trouble'
I!ariq mal !ayyara maloti ja ila braksell 'my plane went by way of
'
Brussels'
fj a Mmi malu wqallul ' his manservant came and said".'
My C informants agree that in such examples, the governing noun
can also take the arllcle, w ithout any semantic distinction; they
~eem to prefer the form without article. This usage has, so far as
know, practICally no parallel in other dialects."
5.32 Noun plus q~aliHer. (a) On the whole, the prevalent pattern
that reqUires the adjecti ve to agree in determination with the noun
It q~alIfies applie~ in,MJC : Iwalad zenl or Ifadwa lad zenl , ' a good
boy, Ilwalad ezzenl the good boy'. Now and again, however, one
meets equivalent constructions without the article on the governing
noun, more especially III J , but also in C, and apparently only in
more or less fixed combinations in M, My M informants balk at
!;valad eZ,~en/ , though agreeing (not without hesitation) that it is
possible, . whereas C a nd J informants have been heard to use it
(or ItS equivalents J/walad lemlil)/ , C/walad elmalel)1l side by side
with the form Wlt~ the article. This has the effect of assi milating
the noun-pius-qualIfier sequence to a noun-plus-noun anne xation or
"construct phrase," as can ~ seen from the behavior of nouns
ending in the feminine morpheme T; some details fo llow.
(i) In M, this construction is common in such fixed phrases
as, ~Iace, names: 1Mb essarjil 'the East Gate (quarte r)" Imal)allat
~I atlgal ,the Old Quarter', cf. such contrasting phrases as Ibab essexl
the Sex s Gate' and Imahallat enna~aral ' the Christian quarter';
these names of quarters are used in Je as well. The construction is
also common in expressions of time, e.g. Isahr ejjayl 'next month',
I~ant ellux/ 'next year' /,am elmaQi/ 'last year', Imart elluxl ' next
lime, once more'. With Ilux/, Ilaxl 'other' it seems somewhat more
productive, e.g. Inawesni hay junu!! elluxl ' hand me that other
~alise, perhaps bec~,use the membership of Ilu x/ in the category
qualIfYlllg adject ive IS moot; the form lejjun!a lIuxl does, however,
occur. Sim Ilarly, lid elyemna/, lid elyesral 'the right (left) hand'131
note also ,l'id eccebirl 'the Great Feast (Feast of the Sacrifice)', ~nd
III proverbs, e.g. Isabb 'enab laswadl 'he cursed the black grapes'l38
,
,
128
:the day he left'), whereas in J there is not only / waqt elkent bejjays/
the tl1~e ~~u were In. the army', but also /sen lagidu/ 'the thing that
I want, /se~ essuwwetu/ 'the thing that you did', / ~al)iir elliiai qayezzawwa]/ t~e young ~an \~ho is getting married'. In J proverbs,
cf. /s~hg e!ma endak bInu I)slb/ 'a month in which you have no account, / I)Jaga elmateg(\iiha/ 'a stone you don't like .. .' (or / l)jiigt/).142
As shown by some of the examples, it is not always certain whether
the antecedent IS determinate or indeterminate, and the contrast
may be neutralized; cf. / mayniim bemkiin elyebgadlu/' he doesn't
sleep III a place where he'll be cold ', i.e. 'he knows how to get along'.
(e) Absence of the article in such cases as have just been discussed.
and the merger or near merger of noun-plus-qualifier phrases with
construct phrases are attested in older stages of Arabic and in a
number of present-day dialects. 143 Such constructions seem nowhere
to have replaced the dominant pattern, and in present-day dialects
they occur predominantly in more or less lixed phrases. If, as would
appear, J and to some extent C have here again preserved more traces
of an older usage than M, the differentiation may be due to greater
mfluence of Cl. Ar. and to greater dialect levelling among my M
mformants.
L.
(a) Another phenomenon that occurs in all three dialects, but with
129
per se does not, 'however, seem to carry any extra emphasis as compared to the unmarked construction.
(e) In C, this usage is much less marginal than in M ; among
examples noted:
,
I
"
"
:jj
~
130
131
L,
kinship terms and the like in which annexation via / mall seems uncommon; Imagt, 'amma Ibenti/ 'my daughter's mother-in-law (or
paternal aunt)'; ,/ mgatu ssalim/ 'S.'s wife' ; Isdiqu lelmudirl 'the
director's friend'; however, note /kella Iba~gal 'all Basra'. Analogous
examples occur in MC again largely with kinship terms though note
M/wda'ta lmai)mud/, cf. note 131.
(e) Constructions of the latter type, i.e. /,ammu leflan/, are common enough in Mosul and throughout the Syrian area, especially
with kinship terms; they have, again, been attributed to Aramaic
influence. lSI The Central Asian dialects have a parallel construction,
132
,,
.~
, "
134
muzen
'to give'
'husband'
neta
'many'
'nose'
'to see'
'to, throw'
naf
rajel
hwaya
xasem
saf
oabb
J
duni
(laww
ta'a
zoj
kelg
enf
'ayan
farr
135
C
mu ma le~
nag
1a'a
zoj
ktlg
xasem
saf
dabb
,
c
'to -look'
to use the M verb for 'to give' 'side by side with the C form, at least
in the imperative. Further, while M/rajel/ ,is the common pariance
term for ' husband', M/zawj/, a cognate of JC/zoj/, is used by M
speakers in " mildly formal" style. To the last non-cognate triad, 'to
see' , (ve must add that J has, in addition to /,ayan/: a verb /saf/ identical with the MC verb, though the contrast /,ayan/ 'he saw' vs. /sM/
'he caught sight of, found' (durative vs. ingressive) occurs in J only
and thus sets the J form apar.! (cf. also note 173). Among the 192
cognate words (a complete list of which is omitted here) we find
further cases requiring qualification. As already indicated in 6.1 , it
is a toss-up whether the term for 'good' should be listed under cognates
(MJC/zen/, MJCjxosf) or under non-cognates (M/zen/, J/mlii)/,
M/maleh/). The item 'mouth' yields the three cognates M/i)aleg/,
J/ i)alq/, Cji)aleq/, but J a lso has the synonym /eemm/ .
(iii) .Another qualification that must be added to the 192
'tomorrow'
'beside'
M
bawa'
bacer
yamm
J
safan
gada
sob
C
bawa'
gada
,
~ob
As in the case of the terms for 'to see', terms fo r 'to look' are only
partly equivalent in function. Moreover, Cjbawa'/ may be a loan
from M. One of my C informants used /bacer/ for ' tomorrow', a
patent M borrowing.
(ii) Asymmetrical cognates include the item 'cup', for which
MJC have several common terms, e.g. /fenjan/, but for which there
is also the special C/pyala/ and M/ kub/. For 'grandmother', there
is MJCjjedda/, but M also uses /blbi/. For 'to close' there is MJC/sadd/
but J also uses-/taras/, /tagas/, which also means 'to fill' as do the
MC cognates. For 'to open', there are the cognates JCjfatai)/, M
Ifetai)/, but M also uses / fakk/, which also means 'to loosen' as does
the cognate JCjfakkj.
.,,.,
~l
?,
136
'yesterday'
'thing'
'in order to'
'socks'
M
Ibar!:>a
si
!:>atta
jwarib
(s . jiirab)
'spoon'
xasiiga
'to ask'
qasiiga
se'aI
'broom'
. 'children'
'fruit'
muknasa 154a
weled
mewa
J
(I)b6!:>i
sen(i)
!:>etti
jwarib
(s. jurab)
qaSiiga
xasuga
sayaI
mokensi
wIad
miwa
C
mbe!:>a
se
!:>attan(i)
jawegeb
(s. jogabi)
qasoga
sayaJ
maknasi
wI ad
mewa
miwa
senu
es, wes
J
askiin
as
es, as
C
senu
s
es
137
.'"g
I
"
138
'this' (m.)
'this' (f.)
'these'
'these' (f.)
'this, these.'
M
hiiila
hiiy
h(a)Mla
(ha)5anni
hal-
J
ha5a
hiiyi
haMli
C
hiida
hiiyi
hadoli
hal-
hal-
'that' (m.)
'that' (f.)
'those'
'here'
'there'
' thus'
'now'
(ha)6iik
(ha)51"
(ha)Mlak
hnii(na)
hnak(a)
hlci
hassa
ha5iik
ha5lk
haMlak
hon(i)
wniki
heke5
hassa, ssa 'a
139
hadiik
hadlk
hadolak
hOn(i)
honlki
hekki
hassa
,,,
140
SUffiX. 162
especially in the sphere of rel igion, not found in' M and J, but the
relatively few religious terms gathered so far in C are of Arabic
origin. I take it this is due to the non-systematic character of this
aspect of the investigation. 163 The one non-Arabic set of lexical
items by which one of the three dialects is clearly marked off from
the other two is, as in other Judea-Arabic dialects, the Hebrew a nd
Judea-Aramaic element in J, to which we turn below.
6.42 (a) The list appearing in (d) belo w, gives an idea of the sort
of Hebraic vocabulary in use among the generality of J speakers as
an integral part of their Arabic dialect. A good many of these have
direct and in direct reference to religious matters, and though ttte
141
in common, everyday use are not very numerous; many have Arabic
remain unclear ; mobile SIVa, as well as $~r~ and segol are lei in all
I
f,
142
143
This term is very frequent, and one of the few Jewish terms
well-known to M and C speakers, who use it as a mock J word
and pronounce it lubbel/.
lasOrl 'forbidden, unlawful' , Heb. 'aSlIl', same meaning; fairly common
as a sentence word meaning 'don't do it' or 'that isn't done', i.q.
M/\.laram/, C/\.lagam/. Cf. also lessOrl, Heb. 'isslIl' 'a prohibition', esp. in tbe1c$$urJ, 'in an unlawfu l manner'
lafe llul 'nevertheless, still', Heb. 'afillu 'even', e.g. lasma suwwit61u
mli\.lat, afellu lala' mamegla(lil ' no matter how many favors [
did him, still he was dissatisfied'
11;>arbennan/ 'God forbid ', Jud.-Aram. bar-mi/lllan 'exclud ing ourselves'; used when mentioni"ng something
unpleasant or un-
lucky
Ibraxal pI. Ibrax601 'blessing, benediction', Heb. b"axa, e.g. Isawwa
braxal 'he made a (ritual) blessi ng'. T he verb 'to bless' is / begak/ ,
/ybegek/, in ' which the root is Arabic, judging from the /g/ and
the / k/ , but the pattern qelal instead of the expected qalal (cf.
OA/ b'rak/) may be due to the Heb. verb b~rax
/ l;>ahOr/ 'young man', Heb. bdbur, same meaning
/ peOahayyim/ 'cemetery', Heb. bre ha!lOyyim 'cemetery' (lit. 'house of
the living') ; for IP/ < /bl in loanwords, cf. 3.21b above; whether
this is reinterpreted as Heb. peeab bayyim 'opening of life' is
doubtful '
/ paSOq/ 'verse, a 'line of writing', Heb. pasuq 'verse' ; this word ha s the
Arabic plural /ppasiq/ ; on /pp/ (viz. [ppJ) for / pw/ , cf. 3.21f
Ip6qar/ , Iypoqer/ 'to deprave, render irreligious', apparently from
Heb. epiqoros 'a freethinker'
/\.Iabor/, 'a friend' , pI. /\.laberim/, Heb. bap~r, same meaning
Ihax.m/ 'rabbi', pI. /haxa mim/, Heb. bdxam 'wise man' ; / \.laxa m
basil 'chief rabbi'
/I)eremj ' ban, ritual exclusion, excommunication' , Heb. b{!l'em, same
meaning, e.g. /slehu bhereml 'pay no atte ntion to him , forget
about him'
Idasexl 'repelli ng, disgusting'; 1 have no reason to doubt the etymology given by informants, namely the initials d-$-k given in
. the Passover Haggadah as part of the mnemonic device for the
Ten Plagues. These three initials refer to the first three of the
plagues, namely dam ' blood', $"rard~a' 'frogs' and kinnim ' lice',
with regular change of /k/ to /XI in word-final position, as
144
rou
I~a'ar/ 'sorrow, 'grief', Heb. $Q'ar, same meaning ; hence the verb
145
Me speakers
"i,
146
mon to MJC and typical of the Iraqi area, others are peculiar to
one of the dialects involved. They are listed in the order of the Arabic
alphabet with Ipi following Ib/, Icl following /j/, and Ig/ following
/k/. Unless otherwise specified, Aleppo forms are from Barthelemy's
Dictionary, Palestinian and Egyptian forms from my own informants,
Central Asian forms from Vinnikov, 1949, Glossary, and Kweres
forms from Meissner, 1903b, Glossar. I was unable to make fu ll use
of Vinnikov 1962, which I received while this work was being printed.
MJC/abu/ in construct phrases, besides the usual meanings and the
"automatic kunya" (see note 150), also denotes owner or agent :
147
C/baddiiwil '(in) the language of the Baghdad Muslims', a term unknown to my MJ informants, who have no special designation
for any of the communal dialects; see note 108
M/l;>arii;um/ ' thick lips', cf. M/ml;>ar;um/ 'pouting'; in 'Ana I l;>rii;em/
is the ordinary word for 'lips' , which is MJC/sefaf/, sing. M/seffa/,
JC/seffi/
M/bazzun(a)/, I/ bezzuna/, C/bazzuni/ 'a cat'; in M the form / bazzun/
seems preferred as a generic term, in which case it is nevertheless feminine: M/etrek elbazzu n latxarmsak/ 'leave the cat alone
or it'll scratch you'; the same holds for 'Ana [b~zzunl, whereas
in JC and Mosul the form with T is generic. This is the term used
throughout most of the Mesopotamian area and in Central
Asia (bazllna); in Anatolia the term is [~'nnorl, reHecting the
name of the cat in older Iraqi vernacular literature (cf. Flick,
1955, p. 168; -:ra1iqani, no. 174, sillnawr, no. 263, sinnawra, but
.'
~
'"
148
Turk. beli, Pers. bale. Its use as a plain affirmative rather than
a counte r affirmative to a negation (Fr. si) is dec ried as an
error by J:lariri (d. 1122) pp. 119- 20; in MJC it is used more or
less synonymously with / na'am/ and IiI, as it is over most of the
area. Meissner reports it for Kweres but Weissbach (1904, p.
938) adds for the same dialect the term mbala with th e meaning
of Germ. doch, Fr. si as in man y Syr.-Pal. varieties
MJC/ bab/, 'door, gate', is fern. in ordinary usage in M (despite /bab
e55arji/ 'the East Gate (qua rter),) but masc. in lC. M/ lbab
tasa' jemal /, the door is wide enough for a ca mel' (hint to a vis itor
to depart)
M/ bibi/ term for addressing the grandmother, MJCjjedda/ ; in Central
Asia, ' lady, mistress', Pers. bibi ' matron, grandmother'
C/ bi'a/ 'a chu rch', the normal term in C, for which M/ kanisa/ J/ knisi/
M/ta ra/, JCjtaga/ a "fi ller" particle with little semantic content of its
own, usually occurring immediately before the subject of an imperfect or of a no minal sentence; if the subject is a pron. affix,
it' comes before the ver b. Some examples from M (JC usage is
analogous) : / tara da 'ag ullakj'I'm telling you'; / bass elmuhemm,
tara
da'awa~~ik
149
J/cereg/ (MC not noted) ' fl imsy, no good' (cloth, merchandise, piece
of work) ; cf. Aleppo j corok j , 'damaged', Eg. j surukj ' unfit (for
m.ilitary service), defective' ; from Turk. riiriik, wh ich covers all
these meanings
MJjcaqlabj 'to tumble, fall over', and Jjceqelbayij 'a tumble, a fa ll ';
perhaps from *jtsaqlabj ; cf. Barthelemy, Dict. , s. v. saq/ab
MJCjecaliabj, JC also /eallabj, 'to hang on to, cling to', Mjmenjatti
'. bibiti ~e nna neecallab biha, tebcinna bcayaj 'when my grandmother came, we (child ren) would cling to her until she told
us a story'. If from Mjcaleb/ 'dog', it is a borrowing from M in
JC; but cf. Mosul jtkalbacj, same meaning, cf. MJC jkalepcaj
'handcuffs'
Mjcenga!j, JCjcengalj 'a hook' in JC also 'a fork', for which M
150
151
"
::1
'"
152
M1C/suwal/ 'a question'. The two roots vie with each other in
other areas as well, cf. Pal. /sa'al/ (Jerusalem, Galilee) and
/sayal/ (Central Pal. village) ; cf. Barthelemy, Diel. s.v. sa'al III
M1C/sangin/ 'strong (of tea)' ; Pers. siingin 'strong, hard, heavy'
from sang 'stone'
M/si!, l /sen/, /seni/, C/se/ 'a thing, something'; M1C/si 'ala si/ 'all
in a ll, all things considered'
M1C/meswar/ 'soon, in a little while', e.g. /yeji meswar/ 'he'll be
right along'. This word, which in the Syr.-Pal. and Eg. areas is
a noun with meanin gs centering about 'a trip', has, to my know~
ledge, received no satisfactory historica l or comparative treat-
153
,.
"
:1
154
155
J/lemmall 'ants', IJemmalayil 'an ant' (MC not noted) ; most dialects
have regular reflexes of OA /nam l/, but cf. Mosul Inem mall
'ant s'
'"
156
"
157
thousand'
MJC/mal/, particle denoting possession, connection, etc., one of the
most uniformly characteristic features of the Mesopotamian
area, common to all qeltu and gelel-dialects examined so far,
including Anatolia, Khuzistan, and all points within Iraq ; it is
found even in modern Persian (ma/~e soma 'of yours, belonging
to you'; mal-e koja, 'from where') but apparently not in Central
Asia. With suffixes, it can occur indifferently with or without
J/medil 'table set for the Sabbath , Passover, or other festive meal',
apparently no MC equivalent. The J usage thus antedates the
remarks of !;Iariri (d. 1122) who criticizes his Baghdadi audience
for using md'ida and mayda for any table , rather than for a
table on which a meal is set, as correct usage requires (l:Iariri,
MJC/mezl 'a table', pI. MJ /myuza/, C/myOzij. From Pers. miz, older
mez. Used throughout the Mesopotamian area and in the Eastern
Neo-Aramaic dialects (Zakho meza); even in l:fariri's time, the
tabliia and its descendants, etc .). Oussani, 1901, p. 110, gives
158
'dinner table' for mez, and lists {Gwle as 'table'; the latter is un
159
OAjhawiiya/' mein Wunsch', but cf. Pal. jhwiiyej 'a blow', and
Fr. beaucollp
M/hiiysa/, JC/hasa/, pI. MJjhwiiyes/ and jh05j (C not noted) ; Kweres
has the M form, but my own informant from the same region
has / hasaj ; Weissbach, 1930, p. 330, adds for Kweres the more
familiar jbgaraj ; 'Ana has [bagra]; a Muslim from Amara has
jhaysa/, and for Qal'at Salel), Van Wagoner, 1944, gives jbaqaraj
'head of cattle' (p. 107) and jhiiysal 'cow' (p. III). Barthelemy,
Diet., cites the M form for Iraq. In late Classical Arabic
hall'a'i! occurs in the sense of 'cattle, large animals' (Dozy)
MjCjhi~j 'nothing'; M/saku bidak? hie, kulSi miikul 'what's that in
your hand? - nothing, there's nothing'; Jjhiiyi Imaswa hie,
segbet rnayj 'this hike is nothing, a child's play (lit. a drink of
water),. Pers. hie.
Mjwuje(h)/, jwuccj, MJCjwecej 'face'; the last form recurs in the
qeltll-dialects, the first in the gelet-dialects; Central Asia has
lie; Barthelemy, s. v. IVaee, points out that Jawiiliqi (p. 149)
condemned IVII}h for IVa}" as vulgar, and that all modern dialects have forms harking back to an OA form with lui
MJCjyezil ' that's enough', rarer than Ibassl also occurs in Kweres
(Meissner, 1903b, p. xlix). Meissner's surmise that this comes
from OA/yajzi j is supported by form s such as yadzi, yazzi found
with the same meaning in some North African dialects (Mar"ais,
1956, p. 112 ; Cantineau, 1960, p. 60, where the same etymology
is proposed)
160
161
As for the vowel system, OA/ul and Iii are both represented by
JCfe/, whereas M has both lei and lui depending on a variety of
factors: OA/kull/, M/kull/, JCfke1l1 'all' ; OA/sidq/, M/~u dug/,
JC/~edeq/ ; OA/sitt/, MJC/settl 'six'. In given syllabic sequences,
OA/al yields M/ul or lei , JC/a/ : OA/qamar/, M/gumar/, JCfqamagl
' moon'; dAtjamal/, M/jemalf, JCfjamal1 'camel'. Final, stressed lal
is preserved to a greater degree in JC tha~ in M: J/suda/, Cfsodi/ ,
M/sodal 'black (f.s.)'. The 'imti/o of OA/a/, which already made itself felt in Abbasid Baghdad, is very common in given cases in JC,
totally absent from M; thus M/wiihed/, JCfwehedl 'one'; M/~eta/ ,
JCf~etil 'winter'. In matters of word stress, there are some diffcrcnccs
that are more strictly of a morphophonemic character: MJC/ ~ahebl
'friend', M/sahbil vs. J/sahebi/, Cfsahebil 'my friend'.
(ii) Morphology. Subject pron01l1inal suffixes attached to
perfect verbal stems differ in phonemic shape and in some olher
respects : M/geletl ' I said' and 'you (m.s.) said', JC/qeltul 'I said'
vs. J/qelt/, C/qeletl 'you (m .s.) said'; M/galat/, JCfqaletl 'she said' ;
M/geltul , JC /qelteml 'you (pl.) said'; M/galaw/, JCfqalul ' they said' .
Object pronominal suffixes differ as to the morpJlOphonemics of
suffixation (cf. e.g. the last item in the preceding paragraph) and ill
phonemic shape: M/abuya/, JCfabuyil 'my father'; M/abiJ./, JC
labunul 'his father' ; M/uljlIpa/, JC/emmul 'h is mother' ; M/umha/,
JC/emmal ' her mother' ; M/umhum/, JCfemmeml 'their mother' ;
The feminine suffix T has, in the isolated word, the allomorphs lal
and Iii in JC, to which corresponds a single allomorph lal in M:
M/maftuJ:!a/, J/mefluhai , Cfmaftiihal 'open (f.s.), but M/cebira/,
JC/kbigil ' big (f.s.)'; the allomorphs of T in sandhi are also different:
M/gubti/, JC/qebbetil ' my room' ; M/gu\J\Jatna/, JCfqebbetn al ' our
room'. Unit nouns are usually formed by appending the suffix -/ayil
in JC, the suffix T in M: MI l;> us!a/, J/bes!iiyi/, Cfba!aJayil 'an onion' .
Morphemes preposed to the imperfect are similar in shape and function in JC and differ from M usage: JCfqanqiil1 'we say', Idanqii ll
'let's say', vs. M/dangiill 'we say' and 'let's say'.
(iii) Syntax. Few points were investigated ;' determinate nounplus-adjective phrases more often lack the initial article in JC Uwalad
lekbigf) than in M (flwalad eecebir/, ' the big boy'); determinate direct
objects are marked by an anticipatory pro nominal suffi J( plus the
morpheme L more often in JC than in M: JC/hazzu 19asul 'he shook
his head', M/hazz rasa/.
162
SUMMARY AN D CONCLUSION
163
'they said' but JjqalOluj vs. Cjqiiluluj 'they said to him'. Other differences are due to the fact that C treats K ,-y verbs unlike others,
while J does not : J/qaguj 'they read' (like Jjkatbu/ ' they wrote'),
but Cfqaroj vs. jkatabu/ ; Jjteqqenj 'you (f.s.) read' (like jtketbenj
'you (f.s.). write'), but Cfteqrenj vs. jtektebin/ ; Jjteqqonj 'you (pl.)
read' (like jtketbonj 'you (pl.) write'), but Cjteqronj vs. jtektebunj .
As for object pronominal suffixes, C has the invariant -jki/ for the
2f.s., as Mosul and Anatolia, whereas J has j k j ~ j kij : Cjabukij
'your (f.s.) father', jemki/ 'ydur (f.s.) mother', Jjabukij, jemmekj.
The morl?hophonemics of the suffixes - hii and - hem differ: JCjemmaj
'her mother', ]jabuhaj, Cjabuwaj ' her father'; JCjjabaj 'he brought
her' but ]Jjabuhaj (cf. Ijjabonuj 'they brought him') vs. Cfjabuwaj
'they brought her' ; lCfemmemj 'their mother', but Ijabuhemj, .
Cfabuwemj 'their father'; JCjjebnahaj 'we brought her', jjebnahem/
'we brought them'; C again goes along with Mosul. Though both
1 and C have jaj and j i j allomorphs of the fem. suff., their distribution follows entirely different principles: ]j1)elwaj, Cf1)elwij 'pretty
(f.s.)'; l/ l;>a~ilij , Cjl;>a~ilaj 'trifling (f.s.)'. In Form I verbs, Chas preserved the two conjugations qalaf vs. qatif, like Mosul and Anatolia
whereas J has a single qalaf conjugation, like 'Ana (and like M, which
has a single qelaf where e is j ej ~ j uj depending on the flanking
consonants) : Cfkatabj 'he wrote', jlebesj 'he wore', Ijkatabj, jlabasj.
The imperfects of Forms VII and VIII show differences beyond the
regular phonemic ones and place C somewhat closer to M : Ijaftahemj,
Cfaftehemj 'I understand' ; Jjanhazemj, Cjanhezemj 'I flee'. The
imperative of the verb 'to come' is peculiar to J, C going along with
most Eastern dialects. The morpheme L 'to' has the presuffixal allomorphs Cjelj- (as in M) vs. I j llej- ; double pronominal objects have
a special form in J, a more common one in C: Ijjabelyakj 'he brought
it (him, her, them) to you', Cjjablak yfmuj 'he brought him to you'.
Preverbal morphemes differ : l /qadaqulj, Cjqaaqulj 'I say'; Ijssa'aqulj
Cfga1,J.aqulj 'I will say', and especially Cjkenqeltuj 'I said', as in Mosul
and Anatolia, with no parallel in J.
(iii) Syntax. The optional use of a copula in C sets it apart
from J (and ' M) and links it with the Anatolian area. The absence
of the article in the first term of jmalj constructions is peculiar to C.
The marking of the determinate direct object by an anticipatory
pronoun plus L is less common than in J.
(iv) Lexicon. The Hebraic element in J sets it apart from
164
C, M, and other dialects., In the free personal pronouns and demonstratives, there are a few differences between J and C (e.g. J/ hekeo/,
Cfhekkil 'thus') but in interrogative particles C is closer to M than J:
C/S/, Isenul 'what', M/as/, liISkunl 'what'; a number of non-cognate
nouns and verbs set C together with M apart from J: MCfxaseml
'nose', J/enf/; MC/sMI 'to see', J!'ayan/, etc.
7.13 Christians vs. Mosul. (a) The dialects of Mosui" and of tbe
Mosul area are too imperfectly known to permit a categorical answer
to the question as to wbether C is purely and simply a dialect of
immigrants from that area. Similarities with Mosul are many, but
imate replica of ,the M form. These arouse the suspicion that peculiar Mosul-like features bave been suppressed in favor of something
more acceptable. The suspicion is reinforced by the fact that tbese
are essentially lexical items, in which this sort of substitution is
'four'
Mosul
oba'a
arba'a
hlnu
hiyem
'to see'
qese'
'what'
as, assun
'where'
e!ab
huwa
humma
sM
5, senu
wen
165
'three'
'when'
'twenty: ~
'sieve' \1 '
,j
SaSi
emati
'essin
giibel
I,
tlati
swaqet
'esgin
garbel
other qeIILl-dialects, have preserved or continued several basic phonological and morphological features of the older vernaculars,. It is
problematic whether J and C actually' continue older dialects of
Baghdad' itself or whether their characteristic features have been. imported f,om the north, the present home of most of the qellll-dialects.
With respect to C, the likelihood of northern influences is reinforced
by the immigration of Christians from the north.l 77 With respect to
J, on the other hand, I have no linguistic or historical evidence suggesting immigration fro,m the north or elsewhere; if, as seems possible, the Jewish community in Baghdad has had a continuous exis-
166
(i)
R/a~ell
.. ,
'1
167
features that are at present peculiar to J may hark back to the vernacular of medieval Baghdad.
(b) The Jews and Christians of Iraq spoke Aramaic until they
were completely Arabized,l79 yet most of the main features difl'erentiating JC from M are not related to the Aramaic substratum.
We may assume that, by' the time Arabizalion was completed, there
were some minor communal differences in speech, such as the use
of some Hebraic elements in J, but I find no evidence of early major
differentiation. I so It is as yet impossible to say with certainty when
and how the present major differentiation arose; there is, however,
linguistic evidence pointing to Beduinization in M as a crucial factor
in that differentiation, and some historical evidence suggesting rough
answers as to "when" and "how." These points are taken up in the
168
tarization. In the Syrian .desert and its fringes, which include the
Mesopotamian area, some features (e. g. affrication of OA/ql to
Idzl and OA/kl to Its/) belong to full nomads, others (e. g. affrication of OA/ql to iii and OA/kl to lei) to semi-nomads and the Lower
Iraq village population, whose sedentarization is of recent vintage,
or who have at least been strongly influenced by recently sedentarized
and semi-sedentary groups;!81 and others (e.g. non-affrication of
OA/q/ > Ig/, less frequent affrication of OA/kl to lei) are shared
by groups that arc fully sedentary, but that have, in centuries past,
absorbed non-sedentary influences. It is to the last that the present
Muslim dialect of Baghdad belongs ..
(b) It must be pointed out that there is an alternative possibility:
the gelet influences in M might be due to sedentary immigrants from
Arabia . Dialects of the gelet type are Beduin or Beduinized dialects
only outside of Arabia; in Northern and Eastern Arabia, rather
similar dialects are spoken by sedentaries as well. Such townsmen
could have migrated to the Lower Iraqi towns and brought their
dialects with them. 182 For Baghdad, however, immigration from the
169
hand in hand. Cities were founded, became populated, and prospered. The non-Muslims adopted the Arabic speech of the Muslim
townsmen. ~
at a time when the social and linguistic prestige of the Muslim population of Baghdad , and hen~e its resistance to rural infiuences~ was
at its lowest.
(e) While most features of M are shared by all M speakers, some
show greater Beduinization than others (greater use of Ij/, for OA/q/,
retention of the fem.-masc . distinction in the plural of verbs and
pronouns, etc.) . There is also some evidence, as yet fragmentary,
that some older urban features, now found in JC only, may have
bee n preserved in some remote corners of the M community and , in
some spec ial usages . ISJa
.
7.23 A glance at Iraqi hiStory. (a) A detailed inquiry into Iraq!
(iii) \ The decline of the caliphate and of urban life was brought
to a clil)lax by the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258, by the subsequent devastation and anarchy, and by the second sack of Bagqdad
in 1400. The irrigation system, and the agricultural life dependent
on it, were',ruined, 1 86 and the effects of that ruin are. felt to this day.
Baghdad was greatly reduced in population, the countryside subjected to further Beduin inroads, and Iraq became "a country of
few and small towns .. . while around and between them lay tracts
grazed and dominated by the tribes alone."!87 Until well into the eighteenth century, Iraq was a zone of constant strife between alternating
170
.,
"
process, some were entirely Dew creations. This new urban popula-
tion was Muslim and presumably spoke a gelet type dialect, indeed
the ancestor of present-day Muslim Baghdadi. The non-Muslims obvio usly could not come from the tribal population ; the Christians
came, at least in part, from the north (see note 177) and the Jews
seem to have received no massive accretion from outside Baghdad
(see note 178). That the Jews and Christians did not adopt the speech
of the new Muslim population is probably due to two factors: on
the one hand, the minorities were socially isolated, and on the other
171
\.
.>
REFERENCES C ITED
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN REFERENCES AND. NOTES
AA
AlEO
I Atmales
172
Works are cited by author's surname and year of publication. In cases of several
works by the same author in the same year the letter "a" after the year indicates the
first work listed here, the letter "b" the second, etc. A few' incidental references are
cited in full in the appropriate notes and a re not listed here.
Abrahamian, R" Dialects des Israelites de HamadQlI et dt/spahal/ et dia/ecte de
Baba Tahir, Paris, 1936.
al-CaJabi al-Maw~i li , D" al-'AOar al-'iiriimiya Ii fugat al-Maw$il al-'iimmiya ,
Mosul , 1935.
- - -, Kalima, fc"irislya Inusta'mala Ii 'iimmiyat al-Maw#1 wa-li 'al/~l(i' al-'Iraq,
Baghdad, 1960.
al-Dabbag al-HuOaIi, A. X. , Mu'jam 'am()iil al-Maw$il al-'Ammlya, 2 vots" Mosul,
1956.
173
174
Arabian Ame>rican Oil Company. Pocket Guide 0/ Arabic, Dhahran , 1955 (also
various other undated books : e.g. Spokell Arabic, Basic Arabic, Conversational
Arabic, etc.).
Blanc, H.o Swdies ill North Palestinian Arabic: Linguistic J,Iqlliries omolrg the
Druzes of Western Galilee and MI . Carmel, Jerusalem, 1953.
- - - , " Iraqi Ara bic Studies," H. Sobelman ed. Arabic Dia/ecl Studies (Washington , 1962) pp. 48-57.
- - - , "Stylistic Variations in Spoken Arabic: A Sample of lnterdialectal
Educated Conversation," Contributions to Arabic Linguistics , cd. C. A.
Ferguson, Cambridge, Mass., 1960, pp. 81- 159.
Blau, J., "Die arabischen Dialekte der Juden des MiUelalters im Spiegel der
jtidisch-arabischen Texte," Orbis 7: 159- 67 (1958).
- - , The Stilt us of Arabic as used by Jews in the Middle Ages: Do Jewish
Middle Arabic Texts Reflect a Different Language?" JJS 10: 15- 223 (1959).
- - -, " The Importance of Middle Arabic Dialects for the History of Arabic,"
Studie s ;1I Islamic History alld Civilizatioll, Scripta Hierosolymitalla 9 :
206-28 (961).
- - -, Dikduk ha-'aravit ha-yehildit sel yemey ha-beYIlayim, Jerusalem, 1961.
Bloch, I., "Castes ct dialects en tamoul/' Memo ires de la Societe de LiIlK.uistique
16: 1- 30 (1909).
Blum. S., Qissah l1Iusa : Eill Beitrag zum bagJu!adisehen Dialekt des Neuarabischell,
Hanover, 1927.
Bravmann, M., Materialien ulld Untersuchungen zu den phonetischen Lehren der
A:raber, GoUingen, 1934.
Brockelmann, c., Grwldriss der 'IIergleiehellden GrammaJik der semitisc/ten Sprachell,
vols. I and II, Berlin , 1908. 1913.
Brunot, L., "Notes sur parler arabe des JU,i fs de Fes," Hesperis 22: 1-32 (1936).
Ie
REFERENCES CITED
175
Cantineau, I. ' "Etudes sur quelques parJers de nomades arabes d'Orient ," AIEO
2 : 1- 118 (1936),3: 119- 237 (1937).
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I
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- -,
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_ _,
--,
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180
, I
NOTES
I. In this work, the term "Iraq" designates the present political entity, with
"Lower Iraq" and "Upper Iraq" separated from each other by a line ruiming
roughly between al-FaJlilja on the Euphrates to Samarra on the Tigris. The term
"Mesopotamia" is used here more or less in its literal geographical sense, i.e. to
cover all the Tigris and Euphrates valleys and the a reas between them , from their
sources on the 'Anatolian plateau down to the Persian Gulf.
2. The med ieval sources consulted are silent on the existence of dialectal
differences among the socio~religious communities. Scattered data begin to emerge
in the travel and descriptive literature of the nineteenth century. Oppert, 1863,
and Jeannier , 1888, indiscriminately cited forms be longing to the dialects of 'the
several communities merely as "Baghdadi," with a noteworthy preponderance of
Christian or Jewish forms, unidentified as such. Oppert says nothing whatever of
communal differences; Jeannier explicitly (and mistakenly) attributes two Muslim
features to the Christians, showing at least a dim awareness of the existence of
communal diffe-rences. In 1900, Oppenheim makes a brief but accurate characterization of the Muslim dialect (p. 266): "Die Aussprache, namentlich der Muhammedanischen Bev61kerung [of BaghdadJ, kommt der Beduinischen im , Vergleich
zue Syrischen .und Agyptischen weit naher." In 1901, Meissner noted correctly
that the Jews~nd Christians of Baghdad speak a dialect different from that of the
Muslims (p. 137, rn. 1), that the Christian dialect is close to that of Mosul (ibid.) ,
and that the rural sedentary dialect he_was investigating was closer to the Beduin
dialects than to the uroan Muslim dialects of Baghdad or al-l:lilla (pp. 138- 139).
The earliest article on Baghdadi Arabic as such (Oussani, 1901) presents largely"
Christian data, a wholly Christian text, but aside from the observation that nonMuslims often have 1f!.1 where Muslims have Irl, a fact also noted by Anastase,
1903,p.592,and a few, vaguer statements, the data and text are not communally
identified. Yahuda, 1906, whose proverbs are explicitly couched iri Jew ish Baghdadi,
indicates briefly (p. 400, and fn. 1) that there are dialect differences among the three
communities, that the Christian dialect isc10se to that of Mesul , and lets the lI1at~er rest there. Iq the same year, Ganima, in a collection of Christian proverbs from
Baghdad, supplies many valuable and accurate comments on Christian Baghdadi and
its differences from Muslim Baghdadi. In his description o fthe province of Baghdad,
Chiha, 1908, p. 101 , notes "une assez grande difference entre Ie dialecte parle par
les Musulmans et celui [sic] des Chretiens et des Israelites." in 1914, the problem
of dialectal differences within Baghdad was recognized but not too successfully
treated in Massignon's " Notes." Based on some notions acquired during his
residence in Baghdad in 1906-1907, they give a bewildering account that speaks of
no less than seven different dialects (three Sunni, two Shiite, and a Christian and
a Jewish dialect) within Baghdad; except for a list of half a dozen features contrastlSI
182
ing Christian and Muslim (which dialect 1) usage, and some vague statement
about the Jewish dialect, the sevenfold subdivision is unburdened by substanstiatmg data. Many of the features he lists as common Baghda~i are Christian,
some Muslim. It remained for P. Anastase Marie de St. Elie to publish in his
Llljal al-'Arab large excerpts of Ma'riif al-Ru~fi's excellent description of Muslim
Baghdadi (first written in 1919, published in installments in 1926,1927, and 1928)
as well as a number of other articles on the Iraqi coUoquials (Ganima, 1926;
JawAd, 1930; etc.) and to stale unequivocally in a comment on Ru~fi. 1926,
p.141 , Cn. 2: uA peculiarity of the people of al-'Iraq is that every community
('umma) has a dialect of its own, so that no sooner does a single word cross the
speaker's lips than he can be recognized as a Muslim, a Christian or a jew."
Beyond this, the literature on the Iraqi colloquials (see note 3 below) consists of
descriptions of Muslim Baghdadi so identified or not, of nondescript mingling
of dialects, and some description of the Jewish dialect correctly identified but
with little or no comparative comment. To non-linguists writing on contemporary
Iraq, the situation is well known and deemed worthy of brief comment, thus
Coke, 19~7, p. 20: "Her [Baghdad's] ill-fated history, too, accounts largely for the
strange way in which her little communities have gone on from century to century
leading their own little lives in their own little ways ... [They] have all gone on living,
so to speak, in watertight compartments, each with their own system of law,
their own way of working, their own preferences in family living , even their own
peculiar oddities of dialect ." Cf. also Stephens, 1931, p. xxiii: "]n Baghdad, the
Christians, Jews and Muslims all pronounce their words differently, and employ
their own corruptions of speech." Duri,"describing 19th century Baghdad (1960,
p. 908) is tersely accurate: "Though people of the three religions spoke Arabic,
their dialects differed." The late Cantineau, though he did not deal with the Iraqi
dialects directly, made a few brief but penetrating remarks aptly characterizing
the position of the Muslim dialect: "lis {the nomads] ont fait de !'uaq une Algerie
dans laquelle les parlers de sedentaires De sont que des Hots entoures de tous
cotes par les pariers de nomades, et Ie parler des musulmans d'une grande ville
comme Baghdad, de meme que celui d'Alger, est tout penetre de mots et de formes
empruntes aux nomades ." (1937a, p. 226; cf. also 19~3, p. 148).
3. For a list and d iscussion of most of the relevant literature, see Blanc, 1962.
To the works on Muslim Baghdadi and similar dialects (Ru~afi 1926-1928; Jawad,
1930; Van Wagoner, 1949, 1958; Malick, 1956/7; AI-Toma, 1957) several items
can now be added: Sarbatov; 1960 (main characteristics and brief text with translation); J:lanafi, 1962 (proverbs in fully vocalized Arabic script, with many accurate
and valuable linguistic comments); Farman, 1959 (short stories in modern classical
Arabic but with dialogues in the vernacular, though unvocalized). l;Ianafi, 1963
(first volume ofa dictionary, letter 'ali/only, but very detailed and useful); Malaika
1963 '(brief but valuable sketch of phonetics and grammar). The last tW?, both
by native speakers, were received aftetthe present monograph had been set In trve;
because of their importance, ] have tried to make as much use of them as possLble,
chiefly in the notes, but this could not be done exhaustively. There is much less
published material on Jewish Baghdadi: to Yahuda, 1906, we C3I! now ~dd t~e
dozen Jewish proverbs included in l;Ianafi, 1962, and the score of Items listed m
l:Ianafi, 1963, all correctly identified and rather well transcribed and interpreted;
NOTES
183
Kohen, n. d., and Schramm, 1954, are unpubli; hed. There are only fragmentary
notes on Christian Baghdadi (Oussani, 1901; Ganima, 1906). A rural dialect of
al-J:lilla province has been fairly well covered (Meissner, 1901 - 1904; Weissbach,
1904, 1908,' 1930), and the dialect of Qal'at Salel:t in the Amara region was the
object of Van Wagoner's unpublished dissertation (1944; J am grateful to W. Cowan
for calling it to my attention). Data on the Mosul dialect may be found in Socin,
1882; Calabi, 1935; and Dabbag, 1956: and on Mardin , in Socin, 1882.
4. On the phonemic value of leI, retained from a typescript where it had to
be used instead of /,a/, see 3.21 below. All gelel-dialects actually use the . form
1ge1et/, but one dialect that otherwise belongs to the qe.11ll group seems to lack
the final luI of the 1st pers. sing. (see 4.2) and another has Ikelt4/, viz. exhibits a
Ikl vs. I~I contrast in place of the IqJ vs. Ikl contrast of the other qeltu-diaJects
(see 3.26).
5. The term "non-Mus lim" is here equivalent t o "Christians and Jews." .
The Mandaeans seem to speak the dialect of the surrounding Muslim population.
6. Cantineau, 1956. The oases in question are QariH~n, Sukhne, and Palmyra.
7. Data on Kuwayt are from my recordings and from Kuwait Oil Company,
1952. On the Persian Gulf area, cf. the various handbooks publish"ed by the
Arabian American Oil Company, in the 1950's, and Smeaton,.1958.
7a. Such a relationstJ-ip is hinted at by Tsereteli (1941, p. 147}'and was the
subject of a paper, as yet unavailable to me, by Wolfdietrich Fischer at the
25th Congress of Orientalists held in Moscow in 1960. On Central Asian Arabic,
cr. Fischer, 1961, and bibliography listed there, p. 232.
8. Throughout this work, the abbreviation OA ("Old Arabic") has been
used to designate the putative ancestor of the present colloquials; it is a noncommittal, blanket term, does not refer t o any single, concrete dialect and does not
purport to so lve questions of reconstruction (see Ferguson, 1959; BJau, 1961a:
Cohen, 1962). A symbolization such as "OA/q/" shou ld be construed merely as
"the ancestor of the"initial consonant of present:.day Iqall or Ikilll in the. various
dialects." What OA/ql might have sounded like or whether i.t was uniform
throughou t OA is quite another matter; see 3.25.
9. rite Iraq Statistical Abslracl-1959 (Baghdad, 1960) gives, on t he basis
of the 1957 census, a total of 784,763. On the immigration from country to city,
see Kohen, 1953/54.
184
troops during World War I (Thompson, 1915; Cole, 1917; Kelly 1917; Van Ess,
1917) all show an admixture of many features st rongly resembling Christian
Baghdadi, but all are based on data suppl ied by Christian informants from Basra
or Amara. The evidence for the informants' communal affiliation is, it must be
added, indirect, but nevertheless quite compelling, e.g. the name (Elias Georges in
Thompson) and certain passages in the other works. [n all, Muslim features are
liberally mixed with the Christian dialects, often occurring side by side and interchangeably.
13. This is based on statements by my informants, all of whom were quite
conversant with the Baghdad situation and aU of whom stated that differentiation
does not run along communa l lines in Mosul. The fact that my Jewish and Christian
Mosul informants say e. g. [honak] 'there' whe reas my Muslim informants say
[hnDka] o r that my Jewish informant has [elrather than [i] in the feminine ending
of such words as [bazziine] (non-Jewish informants : [bazzDui]) raises a question
which [ cannot answer, viz. how far these differences actually correlate with
community affiliation. Dabbag, 1956, p. 8, speaks of differences in pronunciation,
including greater vs. lesser 'imala (i. e. possibly the matter of the feminine ending
just referred to) as ex.isting between different quartcrs, not different communities.
Caiabl, 1935, includes a score of items (mostly but not exclusively words of
Aramaic origin pertaining to religion) in use among Mosul Christians only; cf.
notes 126 and 163 below.
NOTES
185
"
striking s ~milarities to our Iraqi situation .
.
17. This ske~ch of communal differentiation in Jerusa lem Arabic is heavily
mdebted to M. Plamenta, who was kind enough to send me a deta iled preview of
his work on this subject. Both Piamenta and I doubt whether [1.] vs. [~) (Barthelemy,
1906, p. 199) or the structural differences reported by Garbell, 1958, pp. 306, 322, .
326, truly oppose Christians to Muslims, viz. a re fully correlated with communal
affiliation.
.
IS. Barthelemy, 1905, p. IS3 , indicates a single difference between Christians
and MUSlim's in Aleppo, viz. Christian lay] and raw] vs. Muslim [eJ an(l [0]. One
wonders whether even this correlates fully with community affiliation, cf.
Barthele~y's DictiOllllaire, s: v. Itor/. where " les femmes chretiennes" are said to
pronounce 7tor/ and Itawr/ . For information on Cairo, I am indebted to N.
Safran, M. Farid, and G , Abi-Saab.
20. On the Algiers region, see Millon, 1937; Ca~tineau, 1937b, pp.709ff.;
on Fez, Brunot, .1936; on Tlemcen, Mar.;ais, 1902, and Cantineau, 1940, pp. 222ff.
The somewhat different account of Muslim-Jewish differences I find in Ph. Mar~is ,
1957, ~p. 223ff., though it does not invalidate my conclusions, is puzzling, as it is
?stenstbly based on the same sources. A complicating factor (which, incidentally,
10 no ~ay solves t~e puzzle) is that Cohen, 1912, leaves out of account the many
ru~a~ IOfluenc.es which seem to pervade present-day Muslim Algiers speech. lowe
thIS IOformatJon to A. F. R. Brown, who wrote a dissertation on.this dialect.
15. For a bird's-eye view, sec Mieses, 1915 ; Cohen, 1956. It is noteworthy
that Mieses who, in his discussion of the origin of Jewish dialects, tries very hard
to show that die Konfession" per se (as opposed to race, etc.) can create dialectal
splits, produces illustrations of " minor" differentiation only. Similarly, Pickford,
1956, suggests a difference between upper-class Protestants on the one hand and,
on the other hand , lower-class Protestants plus Catholics of all classes in the U. S.
in such matters as mentioning the name of the Deity or discuss ing religion. Another
so rt of mino r differentiation is mentioned in Bengali as between Muslims and
Hindus by Chowdhury, 1960, p. 69, namely in the adaptation of Persian phonemic
21. On s.~?entary v~. nomadic dialect t ypes in North Af.rica, cr. Mar.;ais-Guiga,
1925 , pp. "-'Sill ff.; Colin, 1936; Millon, 1937; Brunot , 1950; Ph. Mar.;ais, 1957,
pp. 21Sff.; on Greater Syria, -Cantineau, 1939. Note t hat (a) while all nomads talk
" nomadic ~ype" dia~ects, not all sedentaries t~lk "sedent ary type" dialects; (b) for
North Afnca, the view commonly held, foll owing W. Mar~is, is that this sp lit is
due to two phas.es of Arabization: one in the eighth century, resulting in presentday sedentary dialects, and a second beginning in the twelfth century via wholesale
Beduin invasions and resulting in present-day nomadic dialects, some of whose
speakers have gradually become sedentarized.
19. Goitein, 193~ , 1933, 1934; Rossi, 1939. My own experience. so far as it
goes, confirms the small degree of differentjation.
186
NOTES
cr. Millon,
1938, 1946.
cr. Mansour,
1955/56, 1957.
31. The etymo logy of these fo rms is, of course, OA/albii riba/; the history of
the C form is self-evident , and must include such stages as /lberilJal > IlbeglJa/ >
ImbelJa/, but that of the J form is puzzling because of the 10/.
32. Socin, 1882, has only Ir/ for OA/r/ in his Mosul texts, does not mention
a 181 reflex ; Dabbag, 1956, p. 8, says that Igl for OA/rl is common to members
of all the communities in Mosul and is not a mark of communal ditTerentiation as
in Baghdad, but that "some quarters pronounce the r as such (kama hiya)."
33. cr. Ph. Maro;ais, 1956, pp. 16-17.
34. Cohen, 1912, p. 27. Ph. Mar~is, 1957, p. 224, has matters reversed,
perhaps through an oversight (see note 20).
35. Colin, 1936, p. 500.
187
38. Cf. the rather full d iscussion and verbatim quotes in Gumpertz 1952/53,
pp. 114fT., and the confrontat ion with pfesent-day Jewish ,Baghdadi data in
Mansour, 1955/56, 1957. Cf. also the discussion , in Morag, '1959/60, pp. 221ff.
and p. 224, fn. 59. Gumpertz thinks , plausibly enough, that makriix may be
onomatopoetic reference to uvular pronunciation but also notes that Ibn Durayd
(d. 933 in Baghdad) believes the . term al-karixa or al-k(irNw (both versions in the
original) to refer to the throat. Ot herwise, the root k-r-x has, in the Arabic dictionaries meanings that seem unrelated to pronunciation.
39. Bravmann, 1934, pp. 128ff.
40. l owe this info rmation to the kindness of I. Avineri, who sent me the
manuscript of his master's' thes is on the Arabic element in the Nco-A ramaic of
the Jews of Zakho.
4 1. It is noteworthy that among the speech defects and dialectal pronunciat ions listed by the medieval Arab grammarians, such as kaskasa, kaskasa, talla/a,
etc. (for a list, cf. Anastase, 1903), there seems to be no spec ific term for 1&I < leI;
in these sou rces the te rm lufJga covers a number of speech pecu liarities (despite
Hava who thinks it refe rs only to "misp ronuociatfoo of Ir/"), as can easily be seen
from t he many examples in Bravmann , 1934, pp. 62ff., the discussion in Ja lJi~
(see note 36), etc. Among the several unexplained terms for speech peculia~ities,
howeve r, t here is one which might poss ibly refer to this; it is the term !utatjyat
al-'iraq, of which Xafllji (d. 1659), ed. 1299A.H., p. 234, says l hat it is a lso called
laxlaxonfyat al-'iraq. These terms appear in an anecdote that has come down in
several slightly variant versions, t he earliest of which seems to be in the Komi!
ofal-Mubarrad (d. 898) (quoted in Xafaji, ibid" and Rabin ; 1951, p. 21), where it
is listed with other pronunciation defects by a man who claims that one particular '
dialect is free of.a ll of them. Its meaning has, so far as 1 know, never been satisfactorilyexplained; it is the only such peculiarity which is attached not to a tribal
name (such as kaskasat rabi'a, etc.) but to an area, that of al-'Iraq (viz. what we
have been calling Lower Iraq ; Upper Iraq bore the name of al-Jazira) and
presumably implying a sedentary population. Whether it applies to opr/gl < Irl
shift , or to the famous .accent of the "Nabateans" (Aramaic speake rs) of that
area or to someth ing else altogether cannot at present be ascertained.
188
NOTES
one of M (lqJ > /g/ with only occasional /j/ in loanwords) and another for the
countryside <tqJ > Ig/ or fjJ according to environruent, as in the Beduin dialects).
43. On reflexes of OA/kj in ru ral Lower Iraq, cr. Meissner. 1903b, Weissbach,
1904, 1908, 1930; Van Wagoner, 1944; data were corroborated by my informant
from al-J:Iilla province. On the classification of Beduin dialects having a leI reflex
and those having a jel reflex , see Cantineau , 1936, 1937a.
53. Meissner, 1903b, p. ix, indicates only /q/ inisuch words for his rural dialects
but my recordings have /&/, rather than /g/ in those words for which M has /q/ :
/ga$er/ 'castle', /gesma/ 'fate', /gabbot/ 'coat', (M/qappii\/),/gaiya/ 'issue, cause',
and /&at/ 'suit of clothes' .
44. Cf. Cantineau , 1939, for the distribution of affrication of OA/k/ , and for
the different iation between conditioned affrication in nomadic dialects vs. unconditioned affrication (coupled with fronting of OA/q / to /kf) in some sedentary
dialects (Central Palestine. some Syrian oases, some North African sedentaries).
The coverage in Binder, 1939. is inadequate and has been superseded by Cantineau's.
The semi-nomad ic Beduins of the Negev, Sinai, and (presumably) Egypt show no
affrication o f OA/kL, whereas those of Transjordania follow the pattern of the
Baran sedcntaries and the Syrian desert nomads.
45. Cf. Kofler, 1940, p. 116, and notc 47 below.
46. Cf. Anastase, 1903, and references in note 41 above. On an other alterat ion of this pron. suff., called by the same names, cf. Cantineau, 1960, p. 87.
47 . Cr. e.g. 1the comments by Suyuti (d. 1503) quoted by Anastase in RU$afi,
1926, p . J47 , fn. I, and those by Xafaji, ed . 1299 A.H., p. 214.
~, /e/
compl~l~ntary dist~ib~ti~n
60. In
and /u/.are in nearly
or, to put it
another way, the contrast /e/-ju/ is neutralized in a good many pos itions but
maintained in some limited environments, e.g., fjerQal /'camel', /jumal/. 'sentehces',
/I)ebb/ 'jar', Il);ubb/ 'love', /rekbat/ 'she rode', /rukba/ 'knee'. Neut ral ization is
primarily connected with the existence of two types of consonantal environments,
one [u]-coloring and one [e]coloring (see 3.32), e.g. Idarub/ 'road' but Ibaredl
'cold'; /waguf/ 'stand ing' but {lazem/ ' ne~essary'; /tufar/ 'he jumped' but /tela'/.
'he went out': For M speakers, t he ident ification of a given phone as belongir)g
to lu/ or to /el can be seen most clearly in the informants' spell ing, with lui classed
as tjamma and lei as kasraj the latter is, on the other hand, kept dist inct f.rom /i/
by some ql!alifying adjective. e.g. the frequent term used in Ru~afi, passim, of
kasra gayr ~ar;l.za. J and C speakers make similar verbal responses' when asked to
id~ntify a given allophone; several say that allophones of lei are " a sound 'like
the French e ' in je," a comparison also used by Anastase in his ' comments on
Ru.safi, and .Dy Dabbag, 1956, p . 8, in his discussion of the Mosul dialect. Many
of my phonemicizations (e.g. JC/I;lete!/ ys. M/I;lutulf) are l:5ased on such explicit .
speaker identifications.
61. This on-gl ide has been noted by Me issner, 1903b, p. ix, though he conceives
of it as a "moui llierung" of the preceding consonant; this is corrected by Weissbach,
1904; p. 932, who interprets it as a falling diphthong and rewrites Meissner's
m'ez, z'en, a's miez, zien, and so forth.
62.
Ru~ fi , 1926 ,
p. 313,andpassim .
190
63. This dist inction between final unstressed tal and lal is apparently not
sufficient to distinguish, in pronouncing CI. AT. , between the singular and dual
in such forms as Ikataba/ 'he wrote' and /katab<i! 'the two of them wrote': the
dual form has final stress as well as length. as in the pronunciation of CI. AT. in
other regions.
64. Though little is known about the OA stress system. I am assuming here
largely for compactness of statement, that word stress was on tbe whole similar to
the prevailing pattern found in the modern dialects, as stated in 3.4.
65. Meissner, J903b, p. xi, confirmed by my own rural informants and
recordings. A somewhat different picture is given by Van Wagoner , 1944, for
Qal 'at $a. lcb. according to which the short vowels in unstressed open "syllable are
preserved (though their quality is colored by the environment) except, remarkably
enough, in broken plurals of all patlerns, so that one gets e.g. lisQ(Jrl, filaall, but
claab,jmaal, and 'arUg but 'bUd. Whatever the situation in Qal'at Sale!), a somewhat
similar scheme is presented in Van Wagoner's course (1949, 1958), with even more
short vowels in unstressed open syllables; as a result the course is , in this respect,
quitc mis lead ing as to Muslim Baghdadi usage, which it ostensibly meant to portray.
66. Cant ineau, 1936, pp. 48-52.
67. The symbol T refers to the feminine ending, which was - /ahl (at some
stages perhaps -/al ) in the pause, - /atl in sandhi or with suffixes.
191
NOTES
68. Cf. Rusafi , 1926, pp. 212, 596, on the M treatment of OA/a/.
69. Plurals of the OA pattern qitlall also seem largely immune to 'imala, e. g.
JC/sedqanl ' friends:, I!)ezmanl 'belts', J/begqanl 'ja rs', but there is the J plural
Ijegdinl ' mice' (C form not noted) and the fo rms J/Oebbin/, C/debbenl 'flies' to
ind icate that non-'imiila in this pattern is not as far- reaching and not due to the
same cause as non-'imala in the pattern qtiil.
70. From Kohen's exhaustive treatment of the verb in the dialect of the Amara
Jews (practically identical with J) it appears that aliForm I active participles have
this leI except Iyibesl "drying', i. e. the same as the adjective Iyibesl 'dry'; I know
o f no other Form I verb with K1-y.
.
71. Thompson, 1915,. p. 16: aymree. (See note 12 above.)
72. From an informant from Jirja district of Suhaj province, Upper Egypt,
1 have such forms as [kalbi] 'bitch', [salli] 'basket', ('andeni] 'chez nous', [heni)
'herc'. Howevcr, I note that in a similar dialect of Qina province (Khalafallah,
196 1) such forms have IiI in the pause only, lal otherwise.
73. The dialect of the oasis of Sukhne in the Syrian desert has fil and IiI for
OA/al under conditions similar to those of J, but also in some cases where the
qellu-d ialects have only la/, e. g. [cib] "he brought', MJC/jab/ ; cf. Cantineau,
79. Schaade, 1911 , pp. 38-40; l:Iariri (ed. 1299 A. H.) p. 105, on not pron.ouncing bauii with 'imala, and Xafaji's comment on this, ibid., p. 221, indicating
on the contrary that this is allowed by some authorities because "some Arabs"
do so pronounce. The form hiilli (read Iha ni/ ?) occurs in Hoenerbach , 1956,
p. 169,1.9.
85. The contrasts may be even more tenuous than they seem, since some
192
NOTES
speakers seem to have /p l ratlier than /jay'f./; others may not use /zawil,/zawja/
at all, the common parlance terms for 'husband' and wife' being /rajel/ and /mara/.
For my MJC informants, however. the contrasts are unmistakable, even if their
functional yield is very low. Van Wagoner, 1949, 1958, and, presumably following
him, Malick 1956/57. write ay for both lay! and leI while differentiating aw from 00:
since no adjustments or explanations are added, the results are misleading : bayla
'his house' and mayta 'dead (f.)' are undifferentiated. For a discussion of this
and sim ilar problems, see Ferguson, 1957.
87. For a detailed and accurate list of M consonant c1usters,see Mal ick 1956/57.
88. Cf.
Ru~ii n ,
1926, p. 21J.
them', so we now have /hiya/ 'she', /hinu/ 'he' and /hiyem/ 'they'.
91. Jawaliqi, p. 138, cites the vulgar forin nbn' .
92. cant ineau, 1939, p. 81.
93. Ru~~ifI , 1926, p. 460, lists the feminines throughout without mentioning
their marginal character. AIToma. 1957. p. 42 , may be reflecting Karbala usage;
for villages of a l ~ 1:iilla province, Meissner. 1903b, p. xiv, agrees with my informant.
94. The notation 0, e.g. kitbo 't hey wrote' in Al-Toma, 1957, and Ferguson,
1957, fn. 18. is puzzling. At any rate, Al-Toma might have intended [ow] and his
dialect is, moreover, not quite the s.a me as M; and Ferguson info rms me that,
though ht? be lieves he heard no diphthongization, he used. a C informant for M
usage.
193
98. Cantineau had already noted (1 937c, p. 153) this invariant -/kil as a
feature of C and of a number of " paders de vieilles populations sedentaires"
(Palmyra , Sukhne, Derez-ZOr, etc.). However , I have note~ it also among the
Negev sem inomads. l;Iilli has both zawjik (Hoenerbach, 1956, p. 158) and 'ummiki
ibid., p. 160), with the former type perhaps more frequent.
98a. l:Ianafi, 1963, p. 33,cites achildren'srhyme containing the forms /tal;ltu/
'under him'/waQ-dul "by himself'; commenting on the unusual -/u/ suffix instead
of M/a/, the author explains it as taken either from the Mosu1 dialect or from
that of the A'Oamiya quarter of Baghdad; cf. a lso n. 97a above,
99. On the overlapping of lal and lal in final unstressed position in M, and
on the possibility of an allomorph Ia! after 1t).1and rI. see 3.31. The same holds
for an optional allomorph -/hal rather than -/hal for the object suffix of the 3rd
pers. fern. after base final /a/.
100. One wonders whether this is connected'with the prevention ofhomc;mymy:
if the fern. ended in -Iii , there would be homonymy with Ixali/ 'my maternal uncle"
/,ammi/' my paternal uncle', Ijeddi/ 'my grandfather". Cf./kanni/'daughter inlaw,
(no possible homonymy, fern. has the regularly expected -liD.
lOt. In other words, where the base fina l syllable Kad IiI in OA, the present
fern. ending is -IiI, a d iachronic statement whi~h would include many other examples
cited so far. If we add that the remaining cases reflect /if 01" Iyl in the OA form, we
have an instance of a diachronic statement which is s.impler, shorter, and more
inclusive than the synchronic one. It would not cover such forms as Ibgadda/, or
words not attested in OA, principally loanwords, so that some supplt~mentary
statement would still be necessary.
102. One would expect the allomorphs of T in the prod~ctive, inflectional
function of creating fern. adject ives. as here, to be more regularly conditioned than
194
195
NOTES
{~wJ"'"
119. Some speakers may have only Ie; (cr. RU$afi, t927, p. 148),othersseem
to have lui in a few environment s: /gumet/, but /te'Qct/. Malaika, 1963. p. 56,
reports lu/ in practically every verb with K 2 ...-<.w (a notable exception is cellet . so
that the ru le given , ibid., is incorrect as it stands), e.g. /gulet /./sufet/./rui)et/, etc.
My sources and W. M. Erwi n's informants have on ly /gelet/, /~e fe t /. / rebet / , etc.,
but /gumet/, /buget/.
120. RU$afi, 1927, p. 96, lists no forms with in it ial Je/- . and says that "some"
say /jit/. etc. instead of /jet/, but in his treatment it is neve r clear whether he is
rest rict ing himse lf to Baghdadi Mus lims. Mosul has /jit/. etc. li ke JC. as has
'A na ; the latte r a lso has the unusual3rd pers. plur. of the pe rfect [jam], 't hey came'
though with suffixes agai n (jowk) 'they came to you'. Cf. Cairo Igum/. /guk/,
though in Cairo /ml in the 3rd pl ur. is not restricted to thi s verb.
196
122. Kohen gives for the J verb r ayan! 'to see' the somewhat irregular
imperfect forms fl 'ayn/. In'ayn!, etc., It'anon/. Iy'anon!. etc. My informants
give forms both wit h and without Iy! fo r the lattcr. i.e. both It 'anon/ .a nd It'aynon/.
but in the suffixless forms only the regularly expect ed /t'ayenl. Iy'ayen/. etc.
123. Kohen lists for KI -w a lso J/ntakal/' torely. a sort of merger of a hypothetical*/nwakal / and an actual Form VIII /ttakal/, also found in MC. One
wonders whether one can still speak of a root wkl; the verbal nouns are /tekliin/
and /netkal/. Cf. a lso J:l anafi , 1963, s. v. /nteCal!. p. 335.
124. Somel speakers have /qal/-in the 1st pers. sing.: /qalaqul/'l say" /qalam~i!
' I'm walking' . Kohen gives neither /qadl nor /qal/, but only /qa/: !qa'aqul/, /qaqul/,
as in C ;.this may be onc of the rare differences between his Amara speech and true J.
125. In C, a lthough there is usually no
1'/
la/, a merger into la/ is o rten prevented by the phonetic differences bet,,:,een the
two !a/'s, thus /qaam~i/, viz. [qAam~il However , when the second la/ Is back ,
merger does occur : Iqaaqull is usually the same as /qaqiil/.
126. My Mosul informants (two Muslims, one Jew , one Christian) all h~ve
this /qa/ ,..... /qad/, but CalabI , 1935 , p. 72 , says that this is in use among Muslims
only, whereas Christians h~ve / ka/ ,..., /kad/ (~ews are not ~e?tioned); several
other present markers used III Mosu! are also listed there. Socm s texts have kethroughout , eJg: ke-ja'mif ' he docs', p. ll , as well as a past marker spelled identically,
e.g. ke-gilla 'we came', p. 7 ; my informants have [b), [kan) in the latter case.
127. Van Wagoner, 1944, pp. 56- 57.
128. Cf. Cantineau , 1936, p. 83; as a gene ral characteristic of nomadic vs.
sedentary dialects , 1939, p. 82. Among the Negev semi-nomads, who otherwise
speak an unmistakabl y "Bedu in type" dialect. there is a fbI preposed . to the
imperfect in non-subord inate verbs, t hough its function rema ins to be invest igated.
129. On the /d/ of /dekteb/ see4.8ge; /a~ui is a frequent MlC "tone modifying"
particle, often corresponding to Fr. alors, o r to some uses o f Russ. till , Eng. well,
so , tltel/. See this item in 6.5.
130. MJC!yam'awwad/, fern. /yam'awda/, plur. /yam'awdinl is used to
underscore a request. roughly like Syr.-Pal. /daxlak/. Idaxilak/ ; on the Id/ of
Idogfu /, see 4.8ge.
131. M J ~/wda' tak / is used to unde rscore affirmations or- oaths; the pron.
suff. is variable: M/wdu'ta Imal:1mDd/ 'I swea r by Mal:\lllUd'.
197
NOTES
140. Cf. the many examp les in Yahuda, 1906 , and Sassoon, 1949, pp. I95ff.
141. On the cl ose connection between definite articles and relat ive pronouns,
cf. Feghali, 1928, pp. 90- 100,190, 310 ; Brockelmann, 1913.pp. 536ff.; as a problem in general linguistics , E. Benveniste, "~1. phrase relativc-probleme de syntaxe
generale," BSL 53: 39c 54 (1958).
142. Cf. l;Ianafi , 1962, p. 145, /\:Ijart e lmate'ejbak/ ... 'a slone you don't like'
the equivalent of the 1 proverb cited ; l;Ianan's collection contains many more M
proverbs illustrating this const ruction: p. 82, Ibab ettcjik menha rib/, ' the door
through which wind comes in'; p. 105. Ibir eUeSrab menha/'a well from which
you drink'; p. 138, /talb elyenbal)/ 'a barking dog' ; p. 138. /celmat ettestelJ i menha/
'a word you're ashamed o f' . etc. Fo r Kwerd in the Musayyab district. a geletdialect , cf. /~ fl:lat elli mabiha qcb la/ a side not facing towards Mecca' (Meissner,
.~
198
NOTES
1903b, p. xxvi); for MardIn, a qe/t/tMdialect, cL /ani larai:tet laqulti/ ... 'where is
the carpet which you said .. .' (Socin, 1882, p. 260).
143. Brockelmann, 1913, p. 208; Feghali, 1928, pp. 134-36, pp. 211- 12;
Bauer, 1913, par. 70b.
144. Tsereteli , 1956 , is replete With examples, e.g. i had qatalu 'he killed him'
i .salldiiq kasaru 'he broke the chest', zaraba i billl 'he hit the girl'; cf. also Tsereteli.
1941 , pp. 143ff., and Fischer, 1961 , pp. 262-63.
145. Fcghali, 1928, pp. 298, 332- 33.
146. Brockelmann , 1913 , p. 316.
147. For Lebanon , Feghali, 1928, p. 362; for Mosul. Calabi, 1935, p.S,
Dabbag, 1956, p. 15; (or Jewish Baghdadi, Schramm . 1954, p. 110 ; on Baghdadi
in genera l . Ganima, 1926, p. 586. On Middle Arabic Jewish texts from Iraq, er.
Blau 1961a, p. 215 , and 1961b, pp. 172, 179.
148. AI-Wat:aidi (d. J075) in his Sarb Dlwdfl al-MIlIQllabbi, ed. Dieterici
. (Berlin , J 861- 64), p. 384, line 3: "wa-'i1btiq 'aI-lam bit-mart'll qabT11 jiddan wa-6iilik
mill fah 'al-bagiladiyin"; Brockelmann, 1913, p. 316, thinks these words are a
continuation of the immediately preceding sentence from Ibn Furraja quoted by
WabidI; if so , the statement is from the tenth rather than from the eleventh century.
149. lowe this distinction to some classroom remarks of H. J. Po!otsky's
concerning similar constructions in Syr iac and Geez; cf. his review of R. Schneider's
L'expressioll des complbnellts de verbe et de nom et la place de ['adjecti! epilhete
eu Cueze (paris, 1959) in JSS 6:251- 56 (1961).
150. It is perhaps even commoner in I raq that a person addressed as labu
salmanl should not be the father of Isalman/, because of the custom of using.
a n " automatic kunya" for persons having certain given names: anyone oalled
Idft.wo.d/, whether he has children or not , is likely to be addressed as labu salmanl
jllst as anyone called Isa lmanl is likely to be addressed as labu dawud/. Son~e
other fixed (and reversible) pairs: Isukurl or Isakerl is labu mabmiid/, lyOsef/ ls
labu ya'gOb/, Imbammadl is labu jasem/, labmadl is labu shab/, etc. This is said
to be most prevalent among Muslims, but occurs among Jews and Christians as
well. cr. !:lanafl, 1963, s.v. !abb!.
151. Brockelmann, 1913, pp. 34. 237,243; Feghali, 1928 , p. 363.This constru~
tion as well as the types lsafu leflanl and Iqallu leflan/, are att ributed to AramaiC
inft~ence by these authors and those mentioned in note 147, but somewhat similar
constructions in North African dialects are thought by Fischer, 1907, and p:h.
Man;ais, 1956, pp. 413, 611, to be due to Berber influence; these occur with kinship terms on ly.
152. Tsereteli, 1941, p. 145, and for examples , Tsereteli, 1956,passim.
1 199
153. Cf. lJAL 21: 121- 37 (l955); and AI-Toma, 1957, who uses this list for
a lex ical c~rnparison of classical Arabic and Iraqi. I have not used his entries
where they seemed to deviate from M and reflect another Iraqi colloquial, perhaps
that or Kafbala.
154. C.A. Ferguson and M. Said, Lexical Voriallll' ill Arabic Dialects, 1958,
18 pp. (muJt \lith).
154a. However, Malaika, 1963, p. 26, has the regular cognate M/makensa/.
155. An interesting historical and comparative study of the demonstrat ive
constructions in the Arabic dialect , based on the ava il able literature, may be found
in Fischer, 1959.
156. Fischer, 1961, p. 259.
157. The vowel of J/keml is probably nothing'but a lengthening of the original
J as in MC would have been (kITL], with the characteristically
Baghdadi mid or lower mid vowel; it is this vowel, lengthened , t hat we have in
Ikern/. As for the lengthening itself, it has parallels jn Cairo Ikarnl and elsewhere .
Ikam/, which in
158. On C /emti/ , cf. 3.360 (iii) and note 71. One wonders whether the initial
syllab le of M/yamta/ [yemt] could not have developed from an original /cmtal
(i em1E;] through stabilizat ion and phonell1iciza~ion of t he on~glide (cf. 3.31e (iii]).
A more certain instance of sllch a shift can be seen in IbOfya/ 'buffet'; the nonoccurrence of final unstressed /el in the dialect caused something like -[biW) to
be resolved into [bOJYf:]. which is more in accordance with existing patterns, cf.
!barnya! 'okra'.
159. Positing - [hawniki] as the basis of both the J and C forms, theJ development would look something li ke this : [Ihawniki] 'thither' [Iawnik i) [I~wnikil and
[Iuwniki], which is' reinterpreted as /11 plus Iwniki/, just as Iluwl5.dl is III plus
Iwladl 'the ch ild ren'; a simi lar deve lopment took place in Iwlani/ 'first', ultimately
from lawwaian i/. cf. 4.6. That the initial phoneme is Iwl and not luI (o n, the
instabi lity o~ the dist inction , see 3.21e) is confirmed by the "Judea-li terary" version
of t his word. This idiom replaces initial /KKI by I KeK/, e.g. IbeUidl for Iblad/,
and Iweladl for Iwlad /, and similarly Iwenik i Ifor (wnik i/.
160. JavJaliqi, ed. 1875, p. 139: Jllvll' ; Hoem!rbach, 1956, p. 169, 1.9. : Jui ni.
200
162. Cf. the Iii o f M/ hlci/, Qa " at ~a 'e~ Ih.MIiI (Van Wagoner, 1944, p. 139;
repeated in his 1949 course ostensibly as Baghdadi) in dialect s with no IiI a llomorph
of the fem. ending; and even the IiI ofthe J forms does not conform to t he morphophonemics of the fern. cnding (cf. 4.3).
163. The study of Aramaic elements in Mesul Arabic (Dlabi. 1935, does list
a score of items , largely connected with religion, that are in usc among Christ ians
only. Some of these, incidentally, arc probably not of Aramaic origin at all
(d. notc 126 above) but they arc nevertheless of interest in that they contribute to
our understanding of communal differentiation in Mesu!.
.
164. The dist inction was initiated by M. Weinreich, 1954. pp. 85- 86
J 65. There is as yet no detailed study of the tradit ional pronunication of
Hebrew used by the Ba ghdadi Jews. This section is therefore based on my own
preliminary observations and on some details kindly passed on to me by S. M~rag
and A. Levin. The latt er, who did a seminar paper on the Hebrew elements to J
in 1962, also supplemented the Hebrew lexical items listed here.' ~or w?ich I am
especialiy indebted t o D. Khazzum, a J speaker. For some addlllo~allt~~s an~
their occas iona l use in M , see now l;Ianafi, 1963, esp. s.v. lalmanal widow,
lawir/ 'ai r', l(e)~baI:t6al ' hy mn s'.
166. The rhymed phrase may echo the Biblical ,!JPf!1 wa(ulfuy rOl, 'mournful
and bareheaded' (Esther 6: 12); at any rate, Il:teffcll has no meaning by itself.
167. Cantineau, 1939, p. 85.
168, Cf. the va riant given by l;Janafi, 1962, p. 42, no. 11 6: leSqal qalbak
sason mentaqqat eHeqqaqa/ 'what did your heart say, S., when the ~un went off',
which has M/(e)sl fo r J/asl and M/atl in the verb fo r J/et/, and a different mock
J form for gun. The given name Isasonl is as typically J as Il:lesqel/.
170. The exp ression M/xo majabaw esmi?j 'I hope they didn't mention my
name?' (l::Ianafi, 1962, p. 169, no. 759) is proverbiall y put in the mouth of a man
wishing to insinuate he might be included among certa in persons wanted by the
pol ice or feared by the authorities.
'
J7 J. This Ixosl is simila rl y dev iant (i.e. precedes noun, is invariable) in the
Nco-Aramaic dialects of the area, e.g. Zakho. Turkish influences are fa r less
~oll1mon in those dialects than in Baghd'ad, so that the so lution must be looked for
elsewhere.
NOTES
201
course Bag~dad. On the terminology "Iraq" for Lower Iraq and "Mesopotamia"
for Upper Iraq, see Blanc, 1962, p. 52, fn. I.
173. The:. J vs.
Me
split in usage is
eviden~iy
19~9.' p ..11, ~oe.s have Igamaw y'aynun 'aJayya/ 'they started looking at (or ogling)
me In hl~ genumel.y M dialogues, though he regularly uses lsafl and Ibawa'j with
the. mea~ mg ~esc flbed here. Ferguson, 1959, p, 629, is only partially right when
he 11llp iJe.o; that OA/ra'al has eve rywhere been replaced by Isarl' in addition' to
Qarabas lara), l::Ianafi's M proverbs often have M/re'al for ' to se;' e.g. p. 63, no.
226 ljre'akl 'he saw you') and Inre'aj for 'to be seen' (e.g. p. 58, no. 195).
174. The Turkish dictionaries seem to list no such form, but 1 note that M.
Ben-Cheneb, Nfols lures el persons cOl/serves dans Ie parler arabe d'Alger (Algiers,
1922), p. 57., gives as etymon for Alg. 1awla "turc lavla, IQvli , grec lavli,"
..
178. Sassoon, 1949, gives documentary evidence for the continuous existence
of a Jewi~h community in Baghdad from its foundation to the present', except
for a peflod from the middle of the fou rteenth to the middle of the sixteenth
century (pp. 100- 101). 1 know of no reports of large-scale migrations of Jews from
ot her regions,to Baghdad, though among ind ividuals I have known surnames or
;,
202
other evidence occas ionally indicate Persian or Aleppo origin; I cannot corroborate
Peterman's supposition (1820, II, p. 281), quoted by Coke, 1927, p. 262. that most
o f the oldest famili es of Baghdadi Jewry emigrated from 'Ana. For a useful historical summary. see now G. Vajda, "Le Milieu Juif a Bagdad", Arabica 9.389393 ( 1962).
179. The Arabization of the Iraqi Jews must have been well-nigh complete
by the tenth century, if on ly because it was then that Sa'adya wrote his Arabic
translation of the Old Testament. Traces of Aramaic speech (not restricted to
Jews) can st ill be found in the e leventh century (Epstein, 1915, pp. 53ff.).
180. [ find no reports of communal differentiation in Baghdad before the
nineteenth century (cf. note 2). Flick, 1955. pp. 87- 88, thinks the minorities did,
on the whole, speak Arabic like the major ity; on the other hand, his statement
that the Jews of MedIna spoke, in the seventh century, an "un inte lligible" dialect
of t heir own (ibid.), repeated by Blau . 1961b. p. II , fn. 26,is surely somewhat hasty.
It is based on a single s tatement reporting that someone was able to jabber bi-Iyahiidiya (ibid. , p. 88, fn . 1). On the term '''Kal 'al-yalllid referring to unspecified
peculiarit ies of the Jews' speech, andlor to Hebraisms in their Arabic, cf.
Goldziher, 1872, p. 755, fn. 5; 1901 , p. 14 and fn. 4; the latter reference also cites
a single specific feature said to be characteristic of the speech of the MedIna Jews,
viz. ItI for 19/. Weinre ich , 1954, p. 83, fn. 27. apparently bases his assumption of
an early differentiation of Jewish dialects with in Arabic entirely on these reports
of Goldziher's.
181 . Cf. Weulersse, 1946 , p. 64. The figures for the population of Iraq given in
Docum entation Franltaise, 1951, pp. 6-8 (estimated for 1930) show approximately
55 percent non-'Sedentaries vs. 45 percent sedentaries, but many village dwellers
are in various stages of sedentarization , and very few townsmen (estimated at
5 percent) are truly urbanized. The preponderance of semi-sedentary and recently
, sedentarized populations is considerably greater in Lower Iraq thap in Upper
Iraq. These figures, as G. Baer pointed out to me , are only rough estimates at
best ; they are based on Dowson , 1932, p. 12, where the author states that they
are "the best estimates that the /iwa authorities were able to furnish, and the censUS .
was not in a position to give me any better material." For a list and account of
sedentarized groups in Lower Iraq, cf. OpvCnheim. 1952; for the different situation
in Upper Iraq , cf. Oppenheim, 1939. A detailed history of the sedentarization of
o ne large group is given in SalIm, 1956, pp. 197-248. Cf. also note 175 above.
182. Oppenheim , 1952, pp. 428ff., reports that the towns of Sfik al-Suyfix
and al-Xamisiya in Southern Iraq were, in the nineteenth century, partly peopled
by Najada (anparentl y immigrants from Najd).
183. C f. the discuss ion in 2.23 and 2.24 and note 21.
183a. Cf. notes 97a, 98a, 106. Malaika , I963, whose variety of M is of the
" less Beduinized" type, has one or two forms that may represent this sort of
conservatism : Iluxxil as a variant of Iluxl 'other (f.)' (pp. 13, 70) is unexpected
203
NOTES
for M , where the form s so far noted a re Ilux/. Iluxra/. but cf. JC/lexxi/, with the
no~m~l ~C " i!lIala and Ixxl < Ix&! </xr/. If true M, this Iluxxil may be s uch a
r~hc; It IS harder to know what to make of the fiI of Ikaslani/ 'Jazy (f.s.), (p. 76,
I~n ~ 3 from bottom).; one expect s a fin a l lal, as everywhere else in Mala ika's tex t
/II l~ such cases bemg properly C or Mosu!. W. M. Erwin's informants, whom
he klild ly consulted for me on these two po int s, confirm my sources.
.
184. The main works consulted were Coke, 1927 ; Lewis, 1950 ; Longrigg,
1925, 1953; Obermeyer, 1929; Oppnheim, 1939, 1952; Streck, 1900, 1901; and
the relevant articles of the Ellcyclopaedia of Islam ; especia lly Duri, 1960.
.
IS5. On tho re-Beduinization of Iraq in the eleventh and the thirteent h
centuries , cf. Oppenheim, 1952, pp. 185- 18S.
IS6. It is possi ble that the ruin of the flood cont rol and irrigation system ,
on which Lower Iraqi agriculture depends, and which in turn depends on stable
~dmi?ist ration for regulation and maintenance, actually p receded the Mongol
I~vaslons
about a century; an interesting hypOthesis connecting that ruin with
Silt depos its and the inabil ity' of a weak administrat ion to cl ear them , may be
found 1Il Jacobsen-Adams, 1958, espec ially pp. 1257- 125S. lowe this reference to
M. Brosi.
br
IS7. Cf. Longrigg, 1925, p. 13, where the author summarizes the effect of the
Mongo l invasions on the course of Iraqi history ; fo r a brief b\lt exCellent summary
of this effect, cf. Lewis, 1950, pp. 154, 158- 159. Cf. a lso Oppenheim , 1900, p . 356;
1952, pp. 187- IS8. On the downfall and in some cases the disappea rance o f towns
from the 15th century onward, cf. Coke, J927, pp. 182- IS3; Longrigg, 1925, pp.
2- 3; Lew is, 1950, pp. 154, 15S- 159. A check through the articles summarizing
the history of the various towns in the Encyc/opaedia ofblam shows almost uniformly
the same picture of decay and depopulation between the fifteenth and the nineteenth
centuries.
188. Longrigg, 1925, pp. 120-128, 154-162,200--211 ; Coke, 1927, pp. 194ff.,
230ff. ; and Oppenheim, 1952, pp. 415ff. are replete with accounts of the struggles
.
between tht pashas and the Beduins.
189. The process of re-urbanization, which is still going on (cf. note l SI a nd
note 9), can only be pieced together from various scattered notes and figures.
In the s ixteenth century, Baghdad was "a large carav.an center'~ (Longrigg. 1925,
p. 30) had an estimated population o f 14,000 in the seventeenth century (Streck,
art. "Baghdad" in Ellcycl. of lsI. I), of 40,000 to 100,000 in the early nineteenth
century (Duri , 1960), and today num be rs over 7S0,000 (th is and a ll present-day
figures. for which I am indebted to G. Baer, a re rrom the Ira.q Statistical Abstract 1959, Bag hd~d , 1960). In the sixteenth century , Hi ll a was "a large tribal market
and center or exchange" as it has been a lmost to the present (Longrigg, ibid.) and
Basra consisted mostly of reed huts "whose owners were but lightly tied to city
life" (ihid.); it was rebui lt , though not on its ancient site, in t he e ighteenth century
(Pellat. a rt. " B~ra" in EIIcyc/. of 1sf.2) and today numbers ove r 164,000 inhabitants.
204
Kut was non-existent in the fifteenth century (Longrigg, 1925. p. 2), was a "miserable little village" down to 1860 (Kremers, art. "Kut" in Elleyc/. of lsi. 1), now
numbers 26,500. Amara was built in 1862 (Longrigg, a rt. "Amara" in Elleyc/, 0/
Isl.2), now numbers 53,300. Nas iriya, present population 39,000, was founded
about 1870 (Oppenhe im , 1952. p. 204); al-Xamisiya was founded about 1880
(ibid., p. 428) and Satra seems to have been founded in 1778 (ibid.). The literary
revival reported in eighteenth cent ury Baghdad by G ibb, art. "Arabic literature",
Elleyc/. of Isf.2 , p. 596, may also be con nected with the fe- urban ization process.
190, On the contrastive topography of Upper and Lower Iraq cr. Documentation Fran9aise, 1951 , pp. 3- 5; Dowson, 1932, p. II. On the stability vs.
instability of towns in the two areas, cf. the disappearance of Lower fraqi towns
such as Wasit, 'al-Mada' in , l;Iulwan, Qadisiya, a.nd many others that can be found
e.g. in Streck, 1900, pp. IOff.; and compare this to the relative stability of the Upper
fraqi towns whose history is summarized in the El/cyclopaedia of Islam or in Musil,
1927, pp. 345, 350, 353, 363; 'al-'Anbar, which was on the boundary between
Upper and Lower Iraq near present-day Falliija, is ruined (M usil, ibid., p. 353).
Naturall y, matters must not be oversimplified: Mosul, in Upper Iraq , has had a
rather turbulent history, while Hilla in Lower fraq has had a rather stable o ne,
though the core of its population seems to have been Beduin since its foundation.
19 1. The socio-li ngu istic data and hypotheses set forth in this work thus tend
to bear out an opinion exp ressed twent y years ago by H. A. R. Gibb: " ft is the
contin ua l recruitment from fresh nomadic stock-operating of course in a series
of stages-that has preserved the Arab population of the settled areas in the Middle
East from the ph~sical degeneration and decay to which the populations in its
lowland areas have been especially liable. It is reasonably certain that no people
could halle come through the long centuries of economic impoverishment and
enderuic disease which have been the fate of the Eastern lands, and yet have
retained such a measure of vit ality, had it not been able to draw fresh powers
of resistance from it s desert reservoir." (G ibb , 1942, p.. 88).