Arabic-L:LING:standalone wa-

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 08 Mar 2013
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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-------------------------Directory------------------------------------

1) Subject:standalone wa-
2) Subject:standalone wa-
3) Subject:standalone wa-
4) Subject:standalone wa-

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1)
Date: 08 Mar 2013
From:mcredi at cloud9.net
Subject:standalone wa-

The conjunctions of coordination "waaw" and "fa'" as well as the
prepositions "li-" and "bi-" are not one-letter words and must be attached
to the following word. While there is no disagreement as to the way fa-, li
and bi- are written, it seems that this is not the case as far as waaw is
concerned.

The source of the difference of opinion, as far as I can tell, is that
waaw, unlike fa-, li- and bi-, is not connectable, i.e., not connected to
the following letter. Thus came the idea that it can be detached from the
following word. As evidence that the waaw can only be attached to the
following word is that I have never seen it standing alone at the end of a
line. Does the data presented earlier show a standalone waaw at the end of
a line?

Medhat Credi
mcredi at nyu.edu

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2)
Date: 08 Mar 2013
From:Randi <asadi27 at gmail.com>
Subject:standalone wa-

Good morning all,

I've also been following the 'waw' debate, and was equally surprised to see
that many people thought it was most often connected to another word. I've
never seen a waw used in any way *but* as a stand-alone article. I love
this connection you've made between the history of Syria and Morocco and
how the language has developed, thank you for the info!
Randi

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3)
Date: 08 Mar 2013
From:Dil Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
Subject:standalone wa-

I just wanted to make it clear that the stats I presented a few days ago do
not imply that the Moroccan paper (or the Syrian paper) I looked at use the
standalone wa- more than they attach it to the following word.  That is
emphatically not the case.  Everyone attaches more than they put a space
after it.  The statistics were meant to show only that the Moroccan and
Syrian papers used the standalone wa- at a (much) higher rate than papers
in other Arabic speaking countries.

One interesting thing that I noticed anecdotally (I haven't done a study on
this so it might not be true) is that stand-alone wa- is quite common in
section headings, like:

العرب و العالم
and the like.  This is true for Al-Tajdid in Morocco, which uses a lot of
standalone wa-, but also for Al-Arab Al-Yawm in Jordan, which otherwise
uses almost none.

http://www.alarabalyawm.net/Public_News/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsID=69275&Lang=1&Site_ID=2&HomePageID=403124

If anyone wants to get an idea of the relative frequency of this in
Al-Tajdid, click on the following URLs and then search (command-f on a mac)
for spacebar waaw spacebar, and the standalone wa-s will be highlighted.
 Then hit command-f again and this time type just spacebar waaw and you
will see all the other attached wa-s.

http://www.attajdid.ma/index.php?info=4851

(this one has quite a few standalones if you scroll down to the bottom of
the article)

http://www.attajdid.ma/index.php?info=4849

(this one has none)

http://www.attajdid.ma/index.php?info=4878

(this one seems typical)

dil

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