<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Arabic-L: Wed 27 Feb 2008</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu">dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">[To post messages to the list, send them to <a href="mailto:arabic-l@byu.edu">arabic-l@byu.edu</a>]</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="mailto:listserv@byu.edu">listserv@byu.edu</a> with first line reading:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> unsubscribe arabic-l ]</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-------------------------Directory------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">1) Subject:Vowel length in Palestinian response</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">1)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Date: 27 Feb 2008</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">From:Uri Horesh <<a href="mailto:urih@mail.utexas.edu">urih@mail.utexas.edu</a>></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Subject:Vowel length in Palestinian response</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; ">One of the facts I learned quite some time ago about neighboring dialects is<br>that while they can be easily classified jointly in dialect clusters, they<br>often have significant differences in various aspects of their grammar,<br>often too subtle for the non-linguist ear to detect.<br><br>One such difference is between urban Palestinian (e.g., Jerusalem) and urban<br>Syrian (e.g., Damascus) Arabic. The retention of long vowels in unstressed<br>syllables is almost categorical in Damascene Arabic and their shortening is<br>near-categorical in most Palestinian dialects. A short, but compelling<br>reference for this difference is the following:<br><br>Raz, Shlomo. 1996. Prominence and Vowel Duration in Some Spoken Arabic<br>Dialects. Israel Oriental Studies 16: 193-199.<br><br>I recently began looking into a number of features that Syrian Arabic shares<br>with Iraqi dialects, but not with other Levantine dialects. Unstressed long<br>vowel retention appears to be one of them. My very preliminary data at the<br>moment indicates that not only Palestinian, but also Lebanese Arabic<br>shortens such vowels, including within the stem, e.g.:<br><br>(1) mif'taaH 'key'<br>(2) mafaa'tiiH 'keys' (Syrian; Iraqi)<br>(2') mafa'tiiH 'keys' (Palestinian; Lebanese)<br><br>As for high (or rather, non-low) vowels, the two examples that comes to mind<br>from Jerusalem Arabic are:<br><br>(3) zeet 'oil'<br>(4) zi'tuun ~ za'tuun 'olives'<br><br>(5) 3een 'eye'<br>(6) 3i'neen 'eyes'<br><br>Examples (3) through (6) are from the following source:<br><br>Levin, Aryeh. 1994. A Grammar of the Arabic Dialect of Jerusalem. Jerusalem:<br>The Magnes Press. [in Hebrew].<br><br>I admit, though, that I'd have to think more about this particular point.<br><br>At any rate, I am doubtful that sound plurals and other stem-internal<br>patterns trigger anything else in terms of unstressed vowel shortening than<br>do combinations of stems and suffixes. But if there is data to the contrary,<br>I'd be quite interested.<br><br>BTW -- I tend to think that the 3aalameen example cited by Kenstowicz from<br>Abi-Salim retains the long /aa/ because it is stressed. While the suffix<br>-een is clearly stressed, the stem vowel in the syllable /3aa/ is not<br>unstressed. It bears in the least secondary stress.<br><br><br>Uri<br><br>-- <br>Uri Horesh<br>Lecturer of Arabic<br>Department of Middle Eastern Studies<br>The University of Texas at Austin<br>1 University Station, F9400<br>Austin, TX 78712-0527<br>Tel : 512-475-6644<br>Cell: 267-475-5594<br>Fax : 512-471-7834<br><a href="mailto:urih@mail.utexas.edu">urih@mail.utexas.edu</a> <a href="http://ling.upenn.edu/~urih">http://ling.upenn.edu/~urih</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">--------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">End of Arabic-L: 27 Feb 2008</div></body></html>