Bedouin, Village and Urban Arabic: An Ecolinguistic Study (STUDIES IN SEMITIC LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS) (English and Arabic Edition)

As a culture area the Arab world has had different ecological structures -- nomadic (bedouin) and sedentary (rural and urban) -- with parallel linguistic systems. Throughout the long history of the Arabic language, the development of transitional stages has generated linguistic correlates in Arabic dialects. The notion \'ecolinguistics,\' combined and reinforced with the concepts of \'compatibility\' and \'lexical diffusion,\' is introduced in this study to identify such a sociolinguistic change. The domain of change for this ecolinguistic variation is the extended family in which the middle generation develops new lexical items by the application of ecolinguistic rules. This research also provides a description of these rules which speakers generate as they gradually acquire an awareness of the social parameters for their use. The theoretical framework and the putative results of this study are offered to stimulate further research in the causation and implementation of linguistic change, especially in terms of quantitative analyses of ecolinguistic variation and lexical diffusion in the Arabic language Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgements Foreword Abbreviations 1. Linguistic Change and Ecolinguistics 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Actuation of Linguistic Change 1.2.1 Linguistic Geography 1.2.2 Sociolinguistic Factors 1.2.3 Cognitive Functions 1.2.4 Articulatory and Auditory Constraints 1.3 Implementation of Linguistic Change 1.4 Old Arabic Dialects and Ecolinguistic Variation 1.4.1 Stress and Syllable Structure 1.4.2 Vowel Elision 1.4.3 Glottal Syllabic Closure 1.4.4 Glottal Deletion and Assimilation 1.4.5 Pausalization 1.4.6 Vowel Assimilation 1.4.7 Ablaut 1.4.8 Affrication 1.4.9 Contraction 1.4.10 Some Conclusions 1.5 New Arabic Varieties and Lexical Diffusion 2. Development of Ecolinguistic Variation 2.1 Ecolinguistic Rules 2.2 Some Phonological Features 2.2.1 Despirantization 2.2.2 Deaffrication 2.2.3 Laryngealization 2.2.4 Vowel Lowering and Backing 2.2.5 De-epenthesis 2.2.6 Stress 2.3 Some Morphological Features 2.3.1 Pronouns 2.3.2 Perfect Conjugation 2.3.2.1 The Verb /kataba/ 2.3.2.2 The Verb /šariba/ 2.3.2.3 The Verb /baqiya/ 2.3.2.4 The Verb /qara˒a/ 2.3.2.5 The Doubled Verb 2.3.3 Imperfect Conjugation 2.3.3.1 The Verb /kataba, yaktubu/ 2.3.3.2 The Verb /baqiya, yabqā/ 2.3.3.3 The Verb /qara˒a, yaqra˒u/ 2.3.3.4 The Glottal-Initial Verb 2.3.4 Negation and Vowel Length 3. Ecolinguistic Compatibility 3.1 Non-contrastive Compatibility 3.2 Contrastive Compatibility 3.3 Conjunctive Compatability 3.4 Sets of Compatible Items 3.4.1 Nouns 3.4.2 Verbs 3.4.3 Adjectives 3.4.4 Particles, Adverbs, etc 3.5 Compatibility Correlation Indices: An Interpretation 4. Ecolinguistic Rules, Lexical Diffusion, and Historical Recapitulation 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Selection and Variation 4.3 Ecolinguistic Diffusion of Deflected Agreement 4.3.1 Introduction and Some Historical Developments 4.3.2 Prosodic Conditioning 4.3.3 Synchronic Analyses 4.3.3.1 Adjectives 4.3.3.2 Verbs 4.3.3.3 Pronouns 4.4 Lexical Conditioning 4.5 Conclusion Appendices Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Bibliography Index

As a culture area the Arab world has had different ecological structures - nomadic (bedouin) and sedentary (rural and urban) - with parallel linguistic systems. Throughout the long history of the Arabic language, the development of transitional stages has generated linguistic correlates in Arabic dialects. The notion ecolinguistics, combined and reinforced with the concepts of compatibility and lexical diffusion, is introduced in this study to identify such a sociolinguistic change. The domain of change for this ecolinguistic variation is the extended family in which the middle generation develops new lexical items by the application of ecolinguistic rules. This research also provides a description of these rules which speakers generate as they gradually acquire an awareness of the social parameters for their use.
The theoretical framework and the putative results of this study are offered to stimulate further research in the causation and implementation of linguistic change, especially in terms of quantitative analyses of ecolinguistic variation and lexical diffusion in the Arabic language.

This study introduces the notion of "ecolinguistics" to identify the linguistic correlates of ecological - bedouin, village, and urban - developments in the Arab world, and describes the ecolinguistic rules which speakers generate and apply as they gradually acquire an awareness of the social parameters for their use, to produce new lexical items.