Vowel Names in the Arabic Tradition

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

Plagiarism / İntihal: This article has been reviewed by at least two referees and scanned via a plagiarism software. / Bu makale, en az iki hakem tarafından incelendi ve intihal içermediği teyit edildi. Etik Beyan / Ethical Statement: Bu çalışmanın hazırlanma sürecinde bilimsel ve etik ilkelere uyulduğu ve yararlanılan tüm çalışmaların kaynakçada belirtildiği beyan olunur / It is declared that scientific and ethical principles have been followed while carrying out and writing this study and that all the sources used have been properly cited. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/ihya * This article was extracted from the third section of doctorate dissertation entitled "Arap Fonetiğinin Tarihsel Gelişimi (Historical Development of Arabic Phonetics)".

Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures, 2021

In the third chapter of the most recent edition of Robinson’s Paradigms, J. F. Coakley records the Syriac vowel names zqɔpɔ (/ɔ/), ptɔḥɔ (/a/), rbɔṣɔ (/e/), ḥbɔṣɔ (/i/), and ʿṣɔṣɔ (/u/). These names are based on the thirteenth-century terminology of Bar Hebraeus, and some scholars have suggested that they are the sources of Arabic vowel terminology. However, as we have seen, the earliest Syriac grammatical tradition did not have specific names for each vowel, instead describing them in terms of relative openness and backness with terms like ‘wide’ (pte), ‘narrow’ (qaṭṭin), ‘thick’ (ʿbe), and ‘thin’ (nqed). This section traces the development of Syriac vowel names from their conceptual origins in the ‘wide-and-narrow’ language of Jacob of Edessa through to the eleventh-century grammars of the Eliases of Nisibis and Ṭirhan. This is Chapter 4, §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

Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures, 2021

Like in the Syriac grammatical tradition, the first Masoretic vowel names emerged from the comparative context of ‘open-and-closed’ comparisons, with the early relative terms pɔtaḥ and qɔmeṣ eventually stabilising as terms for specific vowels. However, also like in Syriac, this type of comparison did not become the universal principle for defining Hebrew vowels. Masoretes and grammarians referred to the Tiberian vowels /ɛ/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ by many different names between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Some scholars have suggested that the variation is the result of different ‘schools’ of linguistic thought that maintained different naming conventions, all in use at roughly the same time. Each of these conventions has its roots in the relative naming of pɔtaḥ and qɔmeṣ, but different authors supplemented them with modifications to the relative terminology; descriptions of the number, shape, and position of the vowel points; descriptions of the mouth during articulation; and the addition of Arabic grammatical terms to Masoretic vocabulary. This is Chapter 4, §3 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

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

VOWELS AND CLASSIFICATION CRITERIA IN MODERN STANDARD ARABIC, 2023

Phonemes in a language are divided into two basic groups as segmental and suprasegmental. Among them, suprasegmental phonemes are not dependent on a single sound, on the contrary they contain more than one sound piece. Segmental phonemes are special sound units that are linked to a single sound. Vowels, consonants and semi-vowels are called segmental phonemes. Many vocal organs are involved in the formation of vowels. Among those, the tongue, lips and chin have a more important place in the forming the vowels. For this reason the vowels are divided into various groups as front, back, closed, open etc. according to the condition of the tongue, lips and chin in articulation. In addition to that vowels are examined as short and long in terms of the duration of their pronunciation. The aim of this study, which was prepared using the literature review method is to analyzed the vowels of Modern Standard Arabic in line with the views of the 20th and 21th century Arab phoneticians with the differences of opinion between them. In addition to that it is aimed to classify these vowels according to the criteria of the IPA with the views of the modern Arabic phoneticians.

Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam , 2010

Studies on Arabic Dialectology and Sociolinguistics Proceedings of the 12th International Conference of AIDA held in Marseille from 30th May- 2nd June 2017, 2019

The dominant characteristics of spoken vowels are the two first formants. Thus the vowel systems of many different languages have been documented and compared through their F1-F2 space. Hebrew and Spoken Arabic, both Semitic languages, have five basic vowels: /i e a o u/, though Spoken Arabic has both short and long versions of each. In this paper we present an overview of the results of several studies on vowel formants in both languages. We first compare formants of isolated phonation and connected speech in Hebrew, showing how the formant space is reduced drastically in connected speech as compared to isolated phonation, and how in some cases a clear assimilation to surrounding context can be observed. We then present results on read speech in two Arabic dialects. We show the subtle differences between the two, and discuss the effect of vowel duration also. Finally we discuss how the results can be influenced by the research methodology, and comment on the relevance of the result...

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

Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures, 2021

One of the most common ways that medieval Semitic linguists described vowels was with the concept of ‘sounding’ letters. Quite simply, vowels were called ‘sounding’ because they had some inherent sonorous quality, whereas consonants were ‘soundless’ unless accompanied by a vowel. This idea can be traced back to the Greek linguistic tradition but entered Semitic linguistics through the Syriac grammarian Jacob of Edessa (d. 708). Jacob first adapted the Greek concept of sounding letters in order to solve a particularly thorny issue in his career: it was impossible to write a satisfactory grammar with only the rudimentary Syriac diacritic system. As a result, he calqued a Greek concept of vowel letters from Dionysius Thrax’s Technē Grammatikē—phōnēenta ‘sounded ones’—into Syriac as qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ. Jacob’s eighth-century successor, Dawid bar Pawlos (f. c. 770-800), clarified the meaning of this term, and by the tenth century, Hebrew scholars had adopted the concept as well. The word—now calqued into Arabic as muṣawwitāt—appears in phonological contexts in Judaeo-Arabic linguistic texts from this time, including the work of Saadia Gaon (d. 942) and several Masoretic treatises. The division of ‘sounding’ and ‘soundless’ letters is also attested in Ibn Sīnā’s writing (d. 1037), even while his Syriac contemporary, Elias of Ṭirhan (d. 1049), modified Jacob of Edessa’s original qɔlɔnɔyɔtɔ model to fit a different Syriac phonological understanding. This is Chapter 2, §1 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