Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume V: Ann Arbor, Michigan 1991

356 Pages·1993·29.036 MB·English

by  Mushira Eid, Clive Holes (Eds.)

PERSPECTIVES ON ARABIC LINGUISTICS V
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)
Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); John E. Joseph (College Park, Md.)
Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)
Volume 101
Mushira Eid and Clive Holes (eds)
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics V
PERSPECTIVES ON
ARABIC LINGUISTICS V
PAPERS FROM
THE FIFTH ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM
ON ARABIC LINGUISTICS
Edited by
MUSHIRA EID
University of Utah
Salt Lake City
CLIVE HOLES
University of Cambridge
England
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1993
Library of Congress Catalog Serial Number: 91-641663
ISBN 90 272 3603 8 (Eur.)/l-55619-554-0 (US)
© Copyright 1993 - 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.
Table of Contents
Foreword vii
Introduction 1
I. VARIATION IN ARABIC
The Uses of Variation:
A Study of the Political Speeches of Gamal Abd al-Nasir 13
Clive Holes
Knowing Standard Arabic: Testing Egyptians' MSA Abilities 47
Dilworth Parkinson
Stability and Language Variation in Arabic:
Cairene and Kuwaiti Dialects 75
Alaa Elgibali
The Meaning of Deflected/Strict Agreement Variation
in Cairene Arabic 97
R. Kirk Belnap
Emphasis Spread in Two Arabic Dialects 119
Munther Younes
II. PHONOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
Arabic Pharyngealization and Phonological Features 149
Stuart Davis
Gemination and Antigemination in Iraqi 163
Basim Majdi & Millicent Winston
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
III. SYNTACTIC PERSPECTIVES
Arabic Genitives:
A Problematic Structure for the Binding Theory 195
Tamar Kaplan
The Copula in Modern Standard Arabic (SA) 209
Maher Bahloul
The Position of Subjects in Modern Standard Arabic 231
Bernadette Plunkett
Case-Marking and Binding of Subject Clitics in Arabic
Complement Clauses 261
Mark S. LeTourneau
IV. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
On the Development of the Energic Suffixes 293
David Testen
Early Arabic siin and Siin in Light of the Proto-Semitic
Fricative-lateral Hypothesis 313
Henry Churchyard
Index of Subjects 343
FOREWORD
On March 1-2, 1991, the Fifth Annual Symposium on Arabic
Linguistics was held at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The
symposium was sponsored by the Arabic Linguistic Society, The
University of Michigan's Center for Near Eastern and North African
Studies and Linguistics Program, and the University of Utah's College
of Humanities, Department of Languages and Literature, and
Linguistics Program.
A total of 20 papers were presented at the symposium; of these, 11
are published in this volume. The papers presented at the symposium
were selected on the basis of an anonymous review of abstracts
submitted to the Program Committee. The papers included in the
volume were further reviewed by the editors before their final
acceptance for publication. Two papers included in this volume
(Kaplan, Davis) were presented a year later at the Sixth Symposium
on Arabic Linguistics (1992). They were included here because of
their relevance to other papers in the volume.
The transcription of all Arabic materials in the body of the papers
follows the International Phonetic Alphabet, or standard equivalents.
The Arabic emphatics, however, are represented by a dot underneath
the symbol, and long vowels as sequences of two vowels. The
transliteration of Arabic titles in the bibliographies follows accepted
formats, with some simplification in the use of diacritics. We have
used ' and ' for hamza (glottal stop) and 'ayn (pharyngeal
approximant), respectively. In quoted materials we followed the
original text.
The preparation and printing of the final manuscript was done
using facilities available at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. We
would like to acknowledge the editorial assistance and computer
expertise of Tessa Hauglid whose patience and diligence is particularly
appreciated.

INTRODUCTION
Mushira Eid
Clive Holes
A wide variety of topics are dealt with in the section on Variation
in Arabic: the function of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) vs. dialect
variation in political speeches, patterns of variation in concord in
Cairene dialect, the extent to which Cairenes of different educational
backgrounds can be said to 'know' MSA, and the scope of
emphaticization in different Arabic dialects.
In a study of a selection of political speeches made by the late
president of Egypt, Gamal Abd al-Nasir, during the period 1956-65,
Clive Holes shows how codeswitching between levels—from fully
inflected MSA, to uninflected MSA, to a relaxed Cairene vernacular—
corresponds closely to differences in the ideational content and the
interpersonal context in terms of which Abd al-Nasir chose to explain
the political issues of the moment. When Abd al-Nasir treats political
issues from an abstract, depersonalized perspective, the language tends
toward syntactic as well as lexical and phonological formality; when
exactly the same or similar issues are treated in a more concrete
fashion, and particularly where there are narratives, or where
anecdotal material or personal experiences are detailed, there is a
marked switch to the vocabulary, syntax and rhythms of everyday
Cairene speech. Often, these contrasting styles are used in tandem in
the same speech. Partly, this is to ensure comprehension by various
potential audiences with different levels of familiarity with MSA and
Cairene colloquial (both within and outside Egypt), but partly also, at
the symbolic level, to create a 'man-of-the-people' image by breaking
the normal 'rules of use' in a situation in which fornai language,
however imperfectly understood by the audience, is normally de