Linguistic Studies in the Arabian Gulf

196 Pages·2017·1.82 MB·English

by  Arun Maltese

Linguistic Studies
in the Arabian Gulf
edited by
Simone B & Fabio G
ETTEGA ASPARINI
«QuadRi»
Quaderni di RiCOGNIZIONI
Volume patrocinato dall’Università degli Studi di Torino
Simone Bettega, Fabio Gasparini (edited by), Linguistic Studies in the Arabian Gulf, Di-
partimento di Lingue e Letterature straniere e Culture moderne – Università di Torino,
Torino 2017 – ISBN 978-88-7590-113-4
In copertina: Veduta dal Jabal Samhan(Oman). Foto di Simone Bettega
Progetto grafico e impaginazione: Arun Maltese (www.bibliobear.com)
«QuadRi»
Quaderni di
RiCOGNIZIONI
VII
2017
I «QUADERNI DI RICOGNIZIONI»
«QuadRi» – Quaderni di RiCOGNIZIONIè la collana curata dal Comitato scientifico e dalla Redazione
di RiCOGNIZIONI. Rivista di lingue, letterature e culture moderne, edita online dal Dipartimento di Lingue
e Letterature straniere e Culture moderne dell’Università di Torino. La rivista e i suoi Quaderni nascono
con l’intento di promuovere ri-cognizioni, sia trattando da prospettive diverse autori, movimenti, argomenti
ampiamente dibattuti della cultura mondiale, sia ospitando interventi su questioni linguistiche e letterarie
non ancora sufficientemente indagate. I Quaderni di RiCOGNIZIONIsono destinati ad accogliere in forma
di volume i risultati di progetti di ricerca e gli atti di convegni e incontri di studio.
ISSN: 2420-7969
COMITATO DI DIREZIONE
Direttore responsabile• Paolo BERTINETTI(Università di Torino); Direttore editoriale• Carla MARELLO
(Università di Torino)
COMITATO DI REDAZIONE
Pierangela ADINOLFI (Università di Torino), Alberto BARACCO (Università di Torino), Elisabetta BENIGNI
(Università di Torino), María Felisa BERMEJOCALLEJA(Università di Torino), Silvano CALVETTO(Università
di Torino), Gianluca COCI(Università di Torino), Elisa CORINO(Università di Torino), Peggy KATELHOEN
(Università di Torino), Massimo MAURIZIO(Università di Torino), Patricia KOTTELAT(Università di Torino),
Enrico LUSSO(Università di Torino), Roberto MERLO(Università di Torino), Alessandra MOLINO(Università
di Torino), Daniela NELVA(Università di Torino), Matteo REI(Università di Torino)
SEGRETERIA DI REDAZIONE
Alberto BARACCO(Università di Torino), Elisa CORINO(Università di Torino), Roberto MERLO(Università
di Torino), Daniela NELVA(Università di Torino), Matteo REI(Università di Torino)
COMITATO SCIENTIFICO
Ioana BOTH(Universitatea «Babeş-Bolyai», Cluj-Napoca), Suranjan DAS(Università di Calcutta), Salvador
GUTIÉRREZORDÓÑEZ(Universidad de León), Andrea CAROSSO(Università di Torino), Emanuele CICCARELLA
(Università di Torino), Thierry FONTENELLE (Translation Center for the Bodies of the European Union,
Luxembourg), Natal’ja Ju. GRJAKALOVA(«Puškinskij Dom», Accademia delle Scienze di San Pietroburgo),
Philip HORNE (University College, London), Krystyna JAWORSKA (Università di Torino), Ada LONNI
(Università di Torino), Maria Grazia MARGARITO(Università di Torino), Fernando J.B. MARTINHO(Università
di Lisbona), Francine MAZIÈRE(Université Paris 13), Riccardo MORELLO(Università di Torino), Francesco
PANERO (Università di Lingue e Letterature Straniere e Culture Moderne, Università di Torino), Virginia
PULCINI(Università di Torino), Giovanni RONCO(Università di Torino), Michael RUNDELL(Lexicography
MasterClass), Elmar SCHAFROTH(Universität Düsseldorf), Mikołaj SOKOŁOWSKI(Instytut Badań Literackich
Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Warszawa), Michelguglielmo TORRI(Università di Torino), Claudia Maria TRESSO
(Università di Torino), Jorge URRUTIA (Universidad «Carlos III», Madrid), Inuhiko YOMOTA (Kyoto
University of Art & Design), François ZABBAL(Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris)
EDITORE
Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere e Culture Moderne
Palazzo delle Facoltà Umanistiche
Via Sant’Ottavio, 20, Torino
SITOWEB: http://www.dipartimentolingue.unito.it/
CONTATTI
RiCOGNIZIONI. Rivista di lingue, letterature e culture moderne
SITOWEB: http://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/ricognizioni/index
E-MAIL: [email protected]
Issn: 2384-8987
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Linguistic Studies
in the Arabian Gulf
edited by
Simone B & Fabio G
ETTEGA ASPARINI
(cid:9)
(cid:9)
(cid:9)
DIPARTIMENTO DI
UNIVERSITÀ
LINGUE E LETTERATURE STRANIERE E
DI TORINO
CULTURE MODERNE
All the contributions in the present volume have been subjected
to a process of double-blind review which attests their validity
SoMMARIO
Linguistic Studies in the Arabian Gulf
edited by Simone BETTEGA& Fabio GASPARINI
9-11 Simone BETTEGA& Fabio GASPARINI, Introduction
13-36 Sabrina BENDJABALLAH, Gutturals and Glides and Their Effects on the Mehri
Verb
37-67 Julien DUFOUR, La morphologie des formes verbales simples en sudarabique
moderne
69-85 Fabio GASPARINI, Phonetics of Emphatics in Baṭḥari
87-103 Janet C. E. WATSON & Abdullah Musallam AL-MAHRI, Language and Nature
in Dhofar
105-129 Dénes GAZSI, Language and Identity among the ‘Arabs of the Coast’ in Iran
and the Arab Gulf States
131-151 Andrei A. AVRAM, Sources of Gulf Pidgin Arabic Features
153-174 Simone BETTEGA, Agreement with Plural Controllers in Omani Arabic
175-185 Emma DEMURTAS, Reduplication in Gulf Arabic
187-195 Roberto MORANO, Carl Reinhardt’s Lexical Data (1894): Distinctive Features
and Borrowings

INTRODUCTION*
Simone BETTEGA & Fabio GASPARINI
It might strike the reader as odd that, to this day, the eastern shore of the Arabian
Peninsula remains one of the linguistically least well-known areas of the Arabophone
World. Indeed, such scantiness of documentation appears all the more curious if one
considers the extreme richness and diversity of the region’s linguistic landscape. This
variety has no doubt arisen asa result of the Gulf’s peculiar history: over the centuries,
its waters and coasts have represented one of the world’s most important and most
diverse commercial hubs, a global crossroads for goods, peoples, cultures and languages.
For hundreds of years the Ottomans, Persians, Portuguese and British have fought for
control over the region, always confronted by the local powers. Maritime trade routes
connected Arabia with Africa to the South and Asia to the East, and the Gulf ports were
bustling with activity, swarming with merchants and travelers from three continents,
in a dazzling kaleidoscope of languages. In the interior, the mountains and valleys of the
southern Peninsula were home to centuries-old settlements, while nomadic peoples
roamed immense distances across deserts and plains, their constant migrations
representing one of the most powerful forces of linguistic change in the area. Some of
the indigenous inhabitants of the region spoke varieties of Arabic, characterized by
peculiar features rarely encountered, if ever, outside the Peninsula; others spoke
different languages, loosely related with Arabic but ultimately not mutually intelligible.
In the course of history, Arabic has taken root in Southern Arabia at the expense of other,
pre-existing languages. Some of these have been extinct for centuries, and exist today
only in the form of (sometimes enigmatic) carvings and incisions on rocks and
monuments. Others are still spoken today, surviving at different levels of endangerment,
their history and classification still a matter of debate among scholars.
The history of the Arabian Gulf, and its linguistic history more specifically, are
without any doubt fascinating matters. But one would be wrong to assume that its
present is any less interesting than its past. Certainly, Arabia is no longer the land of
nomads and caravans, the fabled land of frankincense and a mandatory stop along the
spice trade route. But it has lost nothing of its commercial importance: if anything, it
has become one of the seats of the world’s economic power. The discovery of vast
* This issue of “QuadRi – Quaderni di Ricognizioni” appears in a slightly altered graphic design,
to allow the correct display of those symbols necessary for the transcription of Spoken Arabic
and the Modern South Arabian Languages.
«QuadRi» – Quaderni di RiCOGNIZIONI, VII • 2017
10 Simone BETTEGA& FabioGASPARINI
deposits of fossil fuels, after World War II, and the wealth derived by their exploitation,
has brought about a change so drastic at the economic, social, and political level, that it
hardly knows any parallels in the contemporary world. And, it goes without saying,
social change brings along linguistic change. The streets of the thriving coastal towns
are packed with immigrants from all over the globe, and the Gulf is again – as it has
always been – a kaleidoscope of people and languages.
The complex and fascinating picture we have presented up to this moment is, we
believe, a worthy object of study and research. The Arabian Gulf, intended as an abstract
object of (socio)linguistic inquiry, confronts us with questions old and new: both are
appealing and enticing, both difficult to answer. We hope this volume will be a welcome
contribution in this sense,helping as it does in finding such answers, or, at the very least,
paving the ground for addressing these questions from a more lucid perspective.
The nature of the contributions we present here is varied, as is their intended time-
depth. Considering the variety of the matter at hand, this should come as no surprise.
Some of the articles collected in this volume have a uniquely synchronic perspective:
this is the case for Sabrina Bendjaballah’s, Simone Bettega’s, Emma De Murtas’ and
Roberta Morano’s contributions. While the first investigates certain phonological and
morphological phenomena characteristic of the Mehri language of Oman, the latter
three chapters focus on various syntactic, semantic and lexical aspects of the Arabic
dialects of Oman and the Gulf coast more broadly. Taken together, they provide solid
proof of how the study of little-documented, often neglected “marginal” varieties can
contribute importantly to the definition of central problems in general linguistic theory.
This is true, as well, of the work of Fabio Gasparini, whose phonetic analysis of of Baṭḥari
is permeated by the additional dimension of urgency concerning the documentation of
a heavily endangered language, inexorably destined to disappear in the coming years.
The contributions of Julien Dufour and of Janet Watson and Abdullah Musallam al-Mahri
are also concerned with some of the Modern South Arabian Languages. While the former
can be said to adopt an openly diachronic perspective – providing us with some
fascinating insights on the developments of these languages through time – the latter
can be thought of as a diachronic study only in relative terms: what Watson and al-Mahri
focus on is the indissociable relation which exists between a language, its speakers, and
the environment they live in (a theme also adumbrated in De Murtas’ article). The
question which emerges from this relation is a truly fundamental one: what happens to
a language when its environment is drastically altered? What are the linguistic outcomes
of strong nonlinguistic stimuli? Sometimes, this process results in language loss, as
appears to be the case with Mehri, Śḥerɛt̄ (Watson and al-Mahri) and Baṭḥari (Gasparini).
Sometimes, however, new forms come into existence as the result of movement,contact,
and multilingualism: this is best exemplified in Andrei Avram’s contribution, which
investigates the origin of several traits that characterize the variety commonly referred
to as Gulf Pidgin Arabic. Avram closely inspects the possible sources of these traits, and
in so doing unearths parts of the Gulf’s rich linguistic history. Such richness is also
alluded to in Morano’s article, and it is central in the work of Dénes Gazsi, where wesee
how the forces of history are embodied and made manifest into the linguistic fact. Gazsi’s
contribution reminds us that language and identity are inextricably entangled, and that
discourse is the board onto which the game of self-definition is played. In a linguistic
Edited by SimoneBETTEGA& FabioGASPARINI