<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Arabic-L: Mon 25 Oct 2010<br>Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dil@byu.edu">dil@byu.edu</a>><br>[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l@byu.edu]<br>[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to<br><a href="mailto:listserv@byu.edu">listserv@byu.edu</a> with first line reading:<br> unsubscribe arabic-l ]<br><br>-------------------------Directory------------------------------------<br><br>1) Subject: Studies on MSA Development<br><br>-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------<br>1)<br>Date: 25 Oct 2010<br>From: David Wilmsen <<a href="mailto:david.wilmsen@gmail.com">david.wilmsen@gmail.com</a>><br>Subject: Studies on MSA Development<br><br>The question is usually turned on its ear and posed "how did the dialects develop"?<br><br>Neither that question nor yours is by any means settled.<br><br>By MSA do you mean the current manifestations of the writing system? Or do you simply mean written Arabic as it has persisted over the centuries?<br><br>For that, you might look at this piece that I have just assigned to my seminar students:<br><br>C. Rabin The Beginnings of Classical Arabic. Studia Islamica, No. 4 (1955), pp. 19-37<br clear="all"><br>For a detailed look at many of the issues, you might consider chapter 3 (The Classical Arabiya as the Language of an Oral Poetry) in <br><br>M. Zwettler <span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; ">1978. <i>The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry:<span> </span>Its character and implications.<span> </span></i>Columbus:<span> </span>Ohio State University Press<br><br>Then you can read the German and French writers that those two authors cite!</span><div><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; "><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">There are also chapters about the origins and development of Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic in Versteegh, C. H. M. 1997.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; "><i>The Arabic language</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; ">. New York: Columbia University Press</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; "><br></span></span><br>David Wilmsen<br>Associate Professor of Arabic<br>Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages<br>American University of Beirut<br><br>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>End of Arabic-L: 25 Oct 2010</div></body></html>