A History of the Arabic Language

Classical Arabic has been considered a highly conservative Semitic language. It has been assumed that some of its features are the closest we will get to Proto Semitic (e.g., the phonemic system, the case system etc.). In this talk, I argue on the basis of comparative Semitics that other forms of Arabic, namely Neo-Arabic and Middle Arabic, which are not normalized and do not attempt to imitate a non native variety, preserve archaic features much better than Classical Arabic. I will demonstrate this point using syntactic and morphological features. Some of these features are attested in Akkadian and Ugaritic as well as other languages, but not in Classical Arabic. I suggest, therefore, that the dialects are essential to the study of proto-Arabic.

The Semitic Languages, 2nd ed., 2019

The following abbreviations are used throughout this essay: acc. = accusative; CA = Classical Arabic; dial. = dialect; ECA = Egyptian Colloquial Arabic; fem. = feminine; gen. = genitive; imp. = imperative; impf. = imperfect; masc. = masculine; MSA = Modern Standard Arabic; nom. = nominative; obl. = oblique; pf. = perfect; pl. = plural; sg. = singular. A note on the Arabic transcription employed: I use symbols in accordance with IPA and common Semitist usage. A macron over a vowel indicates vocalic length. A dot underneath a consonant marks it as an emphatic, i.e., pharyngealized-velarized, with the exception of [. h], which is a voiceless pharyngeal fricative, IPA [ ]. The symbol [j] is IPA [ ]. *I wish to express my appreciation to the following linguists for useful comments and suggestions on a preliminary version of this essay, not all of which I have been able to follow:

Linguistics and Literature Studies

The present study deals with "A brief description of consonants in Modern Standard Arabic". This study tries to give some information about the production of Arabic sounds, the classification and description of consonants in Standard Arabic, then the definition of the word consonant. In the present study we also investigate the place of articulation in Arabic consonants we describe sounds according to: bilabial, labio-dental, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, and glottal. Then the manner of articulation, the characteristics such as phonation, nasal, curved, and trill. The aim of this study is to investigate consonant in MSA taking into consideration that all 28 consonants of Arabic alphabets. As a language Arabic is one of the most important languages in the world, because it is the language of Quran. Each language has its own phonetic system; furthermore to the enlightenment of MSA sound system; giving a comparison between Arabic and English sound considered as similarities and differences between the two systems such as

2009

Reflections on Arabic and Semitic: Can proto-Semitic case be justified?, 2016

From a comparative linguistic perspective the question whether or not proto-Semitic had a functioning case system similar to that in Classical Arabic does not readily yield an unequivocal answer. It is generally agreed that there are Semitic languages or sub-language families for which a proto-case system is plausible, but equally, there are others where such a system did not exist. The issue is, arguably, more interesting for Arabic than for any other Semitic language, since Arabic is a language whose contemporary varieties totally lack morphological case, but whose classical variety had a case system. In this paper I reiterate arguments I have made before for the indeterminacy of knowing whether proto-Arabic had a case system, embedding it in an expanded comparative look at two Semitic languages, Amorite and Epigraphic (Old) South Arabian. As a spinoff of this comparative discussion one can contemplate ways in which the case system such as described by Sibawaih was instrumentalized out of a system which was not necessarily the system he himself described. Giving greater due to comparative linguistic arguments than is customary practice in Semitic studies opens the door to a consideration of a number of important aspects of Arabic linguistic history which have hitherto been neglected.

By Ivan Petryshyn *In honor of the Arabs and Jews known, **In memory of the Arabs and Jews killed. (Author).

Romano-Arabica, 2017

In several works (1998a;b, 2006/9, 2015), Professor J. Owens has developed a revisionist history of the Arabic system of nominal case inflection. Rather than reconstructing the case system of Classical Arabic, cognate with Akkadian and Ugaritic, for Proto-Arabic, he proposed several scenarios in favor of a caseless variety of Proto-Semitic from which the modern Arabic dialects descend. This article engages with the Owens' methodology, data, and claims in a defense of the traditional reconstruction – Proto-Arabic had a nominal case system similar to Classical Arabic that was lost in the modern dialects. We reconstruct a historical scenario to explain the eventual breakdown and disappearance of case in modern Arabic.

Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures, 2021

Using principles similar to the early Syriac and Hebrew descriptions of vowel phonology, the first Arabic linguists also applied a relative system to identify the vowels of their recitation tradition. Like seventh- and eighth-century Jews and Christians, Qurʾānic readers first identified some of their vowels using terms derived from connections of backness with height. The earliest Arabic diacritic dots provide evidence for this relative phonology, as they were placed using the same ‘high’ and ‘low’ phonetic associations as seen in the Syriac dot systems, albeit for consonants rather than vowels. The concept also carried into the invention of the Arabic red-dot vocalisation system, which took shape around the end of the seventh century. Early Arabic grammatical sources, specifically Kitāb Sībawayh and Kitāb al-ʿAyn, also preserve two-way contrastive phonetic terminology that, like in Syriac and Hebrew, linked the back of the mouth to phonetic ‘height’. This early tradition used naṣb ‘standing upright’ and imāla ‘bending down, inclining’ to describe the various allophones of alif in Qurʾānic Arabic, according to their relative points of articulation. Also like Syriac and Hebrew, this two-way comparison of vowels contributed to an absolute naming system during the eighth century. This is Chapter 3, §2 of "Points of Contact: The Shared Intellectual History of Vocalisation in Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew" freely available here: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0271