Najdi Arabic: Central Arabian

233 Pages·1994·17.006 MB·London Oriental and African Language Library

by  Ingham, Bruce

NAJDI ARABIC
LONDON ORIENTAL AND
AFRICAN LANGUAGE LIBRARY
Editors
Theodora Bynon
School of Oriental and African Studies
London
Masayoshi Shibatani
Kobe University
Advisory Board
James Bynon, Bernard Comrie, Judith Jacob, Gilbert Lazard,
Christian Lehmann, James A. Matisoff, Vladimir P. Nedjalkov,
Robert H. Robins, Christopher Shackle
The LONDON ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN LANGUAGE LIBRARY aims to make
available a series of reliable and up-to-date descriptions of the grammatical structure of a
wide range of Oriental and African languages, in a form readily accessible to the non-
specialist. With this in mind, the language material in each volume will be in roman script,
fully glossed and translated.
The Library is based at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of
London, Europe's largest institution specializing in the study of languages and cultures of
Africa and Asia. Each volume is written by an acknowledged expert in the field who has
carried out original research on the language and has first-hand knowledge of the area in
which it is spoken.
Volume 1
Bruce Ingham
Najdi Arabic
NAJDI ARABIC
CENTRAL ARABIAN
BRUCE INGHAM
University of London
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ingham, Bruce.
Najdi Arabic : central Arabian / Bruce Ingham.
p. cm. - (London Oriental and African language library ; v. 1)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
1. Arabic language--Dialects--Saudi Arabia--Najd--Grammar. I. Title. II. Series.
PJ6850.N35I54 1994
492\.77--dc20 94-34957
ISBN 90 272 3801 4 (Eur.) / 1-55619-725-X (US) (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1994 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia, PA 19118 • USA
To Shokooh Banou

Contents
PREFACE xi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xv
MAP - Najd and Surrounding Areas xvü
1. NAJD AND THE NAJDI DIALECTS 1
History and topography of the Arabian peninsula
and the origin of 'Arab' culture
Archaic nature of the dialects 5
Definition of the corpus 7
Neighbouring dialects to those of Najd 8
Sources on the Najdi dialects 9
Apologia 11
2. PHONOLOGY 13
Inventory 13
The function and distribution of vowels within the word:
Anaptyxis. Relationship of short vowels to syllable
structure. Influence of the gutturals. Elision of short
high vowels in a sequence of open syllables. 16
3. MORPHOLOGY 21
Relationship of the root to meaning.
Word classes. Stem types.
Verbal morphology 22
The internal passive 26
Stem vowel incidence 28
Object pronoun suffixes 30
Nominal morphology 31
viii NAJDI ARABIC
4. SENTENCE STRUCTURE 35
Uninodal and binodal types. Traditional Arab classification.
Focus fronting
Uninodal 39
Binodal (Topic-comment structure) 42
Negation 44
5. THE NOUN PHRASE STRUCTURE 47
Heads and modifiers. The indefinite -in
Apposition 50
The construct 53
Particles and bound elements involved in the NP 55
The transposed NP structure 59
Attributive constructs 60
6. NUMBER AND GENDER 61
Variation in concord systems between dialects.
The relevance of animacy
Gender in the noun 62
Concord 62
7. THE VERB TRANSITIVITY SYSTEM 69
Modification of the number and nature of the arguments
of the verb. Intensiveness.
Morphology 72
Interrelationship of the Aktionsart and Measure systems 73
Reciprocity 81
Repetitive and gradual actions 83
Physical and mental attitude verbs 84
Judgemental verbs 85
Petal verbs 86
8. TENSE, ASPECT AND AKTIONSART 87
Primacy of Aspect in Najdi and Classical.
Previous treatments
Aktionsart divisions of verbs 89
The Tense/aspect system 94
Time reference of the verbal forms 96
Uses of the particle gid/ gid 104
Relative time preverbal markers 107
Non-Arabian dialect influences 109
The häl clause 109
CONTENTS ix
9. MODALITY IN THE SENTENCE 117
Nature of the modal elements, epistemic
and deontic modality
The modal elements 119
10. TIME AND CONDITION STRUCTURES 131
Relationship between the two
Conditional clauses 134
Time clauses 142
Conclusions 147
11. TEXTS 149
Introduction to the texts
1. Abu Ma mūd and his family at the funfair 149
2. Abu Hājūs's business venture 161
APPENDICES 173
Appendix 1. Lexicon of Najdi items 173
General lexicon 173
Expressions involving the name of God allah 186
Unusual expressions heard among the hafīr 187
Greetings heard among the Ä1 Murrah 189
Words connected with travelling 190
Common idiomatic expressions 191
Appendix 2. Local dialect differences 193
FOOTNOTES 197
REFERENCES 207
INDEX 211