Copyright

Stuart Davis; Wafi Alshammari; Musa Alahmari; Mamdouh Alhuwaykim;

Published On

2024-10-17

Page Range

pp. 137–172

Language

  • English

Print Length

36 pages

Aspects Of The Phonology And Morphology Of Saudi Varieties Of Arabic

This article will bring together detailed description of various morphological, morpho-phonological, and phonological phenomena witnessed in different Peninsular varieties of Arabic. Some of the phenomena to be discussed are known, but perhaps the specific details are less known. After presenting general background and some of the unusual characteristics found in Peninsular varieties of Arabic, we focus on three specific phenomena in Saudi Arabic varieties: a productive morphological augmentative witnessed in Ha’ili (northern Najdi) Arabic, the realization of the 2nd person singular possessive pronoun focusing on a southwestern Arabian variety, and a detailed account of word-final degemination and vowel shortening in an Arabic variety spoken in Sakaka City.
Virtually unknown to most Arabic scholars is an unusual productive morphological augmentative witnessed in Ha’ili Arabic (Alashammari & Davis 2019) that includes forms like [klɑɑb] ‘dog (augmentative)’ for [kalb] ‘dog’ (where bold indicates pharyngealization), [šwɑɑʿir] ‘poet (augmentative)’ for [šaaʿir] ‘poet’, and [srɑɑwiil] ‘pants (augmentative)’ for [sirwaal] ‘pants’. This pattern will be described in detail, focusing on its morphophonological realization. An important analytical question that will be addressed is whether these augmentatives are based on the noun forms shown or on the corresponding dialectal diminutives: [klejb], [šwejʿir], and [srejwiil], respectively. The second phenomenon to be described and analyzed concerns the realization of the 2nd person singular possessive suffix. In various Peninsular dialects, the masculine possessive suffix will alternate between [-k], [-ka], and [-ak]. Focusing on a southwestern Saudi variety (Alahmari 2018), this allomorphy is exemplified by examples such as [kutub-k] ‘your books’ [malik-ka] ‘your king’ and [baab-ak] ‘your door’. We will present a detailed descriptive analysis of the pattern arguing that /-k/ is the underlying form of the suffix and then briefly compare its realization with other Arabic varieties and examining the feminine form of the suffix. A final phenomenon to be discussed that appears to be fairly widespread among Najdi and northwestern Saudi Arabic varieties is final degemination (and stress shift) in bisyllabic words that end in an underlying geminate as illustrated by the difference between [ḥagg] ‘a truth’ and [ʾíl-ḥag] ‘the truth’ with stress on the definite article or in the elative [ʾáxaf] ‘lighter’ with initial stress where most dialects have [ʾaxáff]. Focusing on a dialect spoken in Sakaka City (Alhuwaykim 2018), the details of the degemination pattern are presented and analyzed including the lack of degemination (and stress shift) in derived contexts (e.g. [sikát-t] ‘I fell silent’). Further, the Sakaka City dialect pattern is somewhat different from Ingham’s (2008) observation of definite article stressing in Najdi Arabic as witnessed in such forms as [ʾál-walad] ‘the boy’, which would not have retracted stress in the dialect under consideration. Also, we will analytically unify degemination with the occurrence of word-final vowel shortening (and stress shift) in bisyllabic words as illustrated by the difference between [jaa] ‘he came’ and [máa-ja] ‘he did not come’. The shortening only occurs when the vowel is in absolute word-final position as seen from examples like [biʿíid] ‘distant’ and [ʾil-ʿáam] ‘the (last) year’ where no shortening occurs. We conclude by discussing the question concerning to what extent the phenomena presented here reflect ancient features, be it substrate or older forms of Arabic, or just reflect Arabic-internal developments.

Contributors

Stuart Davis

(author)
Professor at Indiana University

Stuart Davis is a Professor of Linguistics at Indiana University. He earned his PhD at the University of Arizona. His research and teaching interests include phonological theory, morphology, and sociolinguistics, with a major focus on English and Arabic. He has published numerous articles on these topics in a wide variety of journals and edited volumes.

Wafi Alshammari

(author)
Associate Professor at University of Ha'il

Wafi Alshammari is an Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English, University of Haʾil, Saudi Arabia. He earned his PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University-Blooming ton, USA. His research interests include sociolinguistics, Arabic dialectology, Arabic-based pidgins and creoles, and Arabic morphology.

Musa Alahmari

(author)
Associate Professor at King Khalid University

Musa Alahmari is an Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English, Faculty of Languages and Translation, King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia. He earned his PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University-Bloomington, USA. His research interests lie primarily in the fields of phonology, phonetics, and morphology. He lectures and offers graduate and undergraduate courses in general linguistics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, morphology, phonetics, and phonology.

Mamdouh Alhuwaykim

(author)
Assistant Professor at Al Jouf University

Mamdouh Alhuwaykim is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English, College of Arts, Jouf University, Saudi Arabia. He has earned his PhD degree in Linguistics from Indiana University-Bloomington, USA. His research interests lie primarily in the fields of phonology, phonetics, and morphology. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in general linguistics, language acquisition, language variation, phonetics, and phonology.