Chapter 5. Morphosyntax

This chapter provides a comprehensive, quantitative analysis of nominal case (ʾiʿrāb) and nasalisation (tanwīn) inflection throughout the Gospel portions of Vat. Ar. 13. Stokes documents every relevant form from the manuscript, comparing its distribution with other early Gospel manuscripts as well as the broader early Islamic-era corpus. The chapter's key finding is that Vat. Ar. 13 is strikingly conservative in its case inflection relative to other Gospel manuscripts — particularly in its maintenance of dual and sound masculine plural (MPL) inflection — a pattern that cannot be explained by the usual appeals to Classical Arabic nostalgia or scribal imperfection. At the same time, significant variation exists in triptotic singular inflection (especially accusative forms and the so-called "five nouns"), which the chapter situates within well-documented variability in the ʿArabiyyah itself. Stokes argues that the evidence from nominal case cautions against treating all aspects of case inflection as part of a single, uniform prestige system: different categories of case marking appear to have carried different levels of salience and prestige in different scribal communities and at different periods.