28.1053, Review: Creole Arabic, Sudanese; Applied Ling; General Ling; Socioling: Watson (2015)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-1053. Tue Feb 28 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.1053, Review: Creole Arabic, Sudanese; Applied Ling; General Ling; Socioling: Watson (2015)

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Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2017 16:24:36
From: David Robertson [ddr11 at columbia.edu]
Subject: Juba Arabic for Beginners

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36224597


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-2350.html

AUTHOR: Richard L. Watson
TITLE: Juba Arabic for Beginners
PUBLISHER: SIL International Publications
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: David Douglas Robertson,  

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Juba Arabic for Beginners”, by Richard L. Watson, is a somewhat slim (ix+201
pp.) paperback, the intent of which is to provide nonlinguist expatriates in
South Sudan with communicative grounding in the creole lingua franca, Juba
Arabic (JA; also called “Arabi”, “Arabi Juba”, and formerly Sudanese
Colloquial Arabic). Chapter 1, the Introduction to the Course (pages 1-4),
orients readers to the succeeding lessons' recurring structure: a “Kalaam”
(Dialogue) is followed with “Kelimaat” (Vocabulary), supplemented by “Kelimaat
Ziada al Der Arufu” (Extra Things You Want to Know), reinforced with “Asilaat
le Temriin” (Questions for Practice). Brief tips here suggest ways of
maximizing both in-class and real-world learning of JA. 

Chapter 2, Pronunciation (pages 5-10), is an overview both of the spelling
system used and the segmental phonology of colloquial vs. educated JA,
contrasting these with standard (Sudanese) Arabic. Subsections examine
consonants, vowels, stress and syllables, and example words for practice in
pronouncing. 

The bulk of the book (pages 11-174) is devoted to 33 numbered Lessons
structured as already noted. In a thirty-fourth, a story, “The Bad Elephant”,
substitutes for a dialogue. 

Glossaries facilitate quick reference, keyed from JA to English (pages
175-187) and English to JA (pages 187-200). 

Finally, references occupy page 201. 

EVALUATION

As I have noted in my review of Nkengasong's comparably nonspecialist grammar
of Cameroonian Pidgin (Robertson 2016), sometimes a description not aimed
toward linguists can end up answering most of the questions a professional
would ask about a language – and even some that are typically neglected in
linguistsʹ grammar descriptions. This is the case with Watson's lesson book,
an accomplishment to be attributed to the heavily textual (that is
conversational, as opposed to lexical or morphosyntactic) orientation taken
here. Overt descriptive comments are at a minimum in this book, typically
totaling a few sentences per lesson, and students are explicitly left to “take
guidance from the way their own teachers speak” (page 1). In that spirit,
then, I am writing this review as a sort of questionnaire, enumerating mainly
from the first several chapters some inferences that I as a student would hope
to check with a South Sudanese instructor. My hope in doing so is to
illustrate how rich a linguistic resource a lay description can constitute,
proceeding from a sense that a less adequate grammar sketch would fail to
raise such educated questions in the first place. Many of these inferences
parallel ones that I have asked about Nkengasong's grammar, and serve a second
thesis: that the documentation of languages generally and of pidgin/creoles in
particular has typically and consistently missed opportunities to notice and
mention these particular kinds of phenomena. 

The Pronunciation chapter tells nothing about prosody or intonation, although
isolated observations come later – for example that polar questions are
distinguished from declaratives by some instantiation of rising intonation
(Lesson 1). More details are wanted. For example, in a content question (cf.
“Ita deru kam?” [2.SG to.want how.much] meaning 'How much do you want?', page
11), one wonders whether a rising intonation is involved, and if not, whether
an identically-worded clause can take the Y/N intonation to give a meaning
such as 'Do you want some (amount or other)?' A query raised by the JA
orthography's representing stress only in polysyllabic words is precisely
which monosyllabic words are stressed/stressable (perhaps e.g. “fi” as one of
the many copulas, and initial-stressed “deru” [to.want]) and which are not
(perhaps e.g. “fi” as a preposition, and the seeming grammaticalization “deru”
> “der” in “Kelimaat Ziada al Der Arufu” above [literally: words more REL
?need to.know]).

>From Lesson 1 onwards a lack of WH-fronting is abundantly evident, though
never commented on. But Lesson 3 points out the optionality of WH-movement
with a “noun” subject (e.g. “Esh wenu?”/“Wenu esh?” ['Where is the bread?'] in
contrast with a “pronoun or a proper noun” (e.g. “Ita wenu?” ['Where are
you?'], “John wenu?” ['Where is John?'], pages 24-25). The sparseness of this
characterization leaves us wondering if it is indeed all common nouns, or
instead just inanimate ones, that allow WH-fronting. 

There is a good deal more going on syntactically than is explained, a similar
example being the varying constituent orders found in JA passives: N V
(versus) V Pron (versus) V PersName/PersName V (pages 25, 66-67). 

One would like to add the unmentioned null third-person (inanimate/indefinite)
object form to the discussion of pronominal paradigms, since it occurs in
large numbers of examples including “Aniina amalu Ø kalaas” [1.PL to.make
3.OBJ finished] 'We finished making it' (page 25). Contrast this with “Huwo
nadii huwo” [3.SG to.call 3.SG] 'He called him/her/it', page 110. Is the
second “huwo” there perhaps a highly topical inanimate? There are so few
examples of animate object pronouns that it is hard to reach a conclusion from
the bookʹs evidence. 

Another paradigmatic null, by which I mean an absence-of-a-form alternating
with a functionally parallel overt morph in analogous position, is a
relativizer. The unelucidated contrast between say “zol Ø ja ainu bet” [person
REL to.come to.see house] '(a) visitor' (page 23), and “usbuu al jay” [week
REL to.come] 'next week' (page 54) is perhaps again one of definiteness. 

Reduplication, which is full-root in scope and apparently constitutes an
unstressed suffix, is first evident in Lesson 5 with “bodaboda” 'motorcycle'
and “ta kulu kulu” 'at all'; another instance is in Lesson 34's narrative
text: “...u bada dugu dugu fil” [and begin to.peck RDUP elephant] '...and
began pecking him [the elephant]'. These look to be respectively based on a
noun (?) “boda”, the quantifier “kulu” [all], and the verb “dugu”; surely a
rich additional lesson could examine the uses of JA reduplication with various
syntactic classes. 

Despite going uncommented-on in the lessons, serial-verb constructions, here
highlighted in curly braces, are a presence in sustained discourse such as the
just-mentioned “Bad Elephant” tale. The verb “gum” [to.arise] occurs
frequently in these, and is arguably simply grammaticalized into an
inchoative-aspect marker, as in “{Huwo gum shilu Ø be ida to}, … {gum dusu
iyaal ta ter}...” [3.SG to.arise to.take 3.OBJ PREP trunk his, … and to.arise
to.stomp babies POSS bird] 'He took it [nest] in his trunk, … stomped the baby
birds...' (page 169). Quite clearly not grammaticalized, however, are other
shared-subject constructions lacking coordination like “...{gi arfau adaana to
kebiir gi durubu kureen to}...” [PROG to.raise ears his big PROG to.pound feet
his] 'flapping his big ears and pounding...his feet...' (page 170). “U ~ wa”
[and] can freely conjoin verb phrases, as above in '...took.....[and]
stomped...', so when it is absent between them, it would be illuminating to
learn why, and how to exploit this distinction colloquially.  

As I have suggested, if a reader is able to formulate such detailed questions
and hypotheses upon engaging with his text, Watson has indeed created a
well-rounded picture of JA that is obviously based on close acquaintance with
the language. This book's shortcomings – such as the lack of an Index of
grammatical features and the scant three References – are only what is to be
expected in the first place in a course-type treatment. Moreover, where I have
pointed out that phonologically non-overt forms have been omitted from
discussion, that probably reflects nothing at all harder to grasp than that
conscious human cognition finds nulls challenging. Consider the lengthy span
between the invention of written numerals and the innovation of a placeholding
symbol for 'zero' circa AD 876 (Casselman [n.d.]), as well as the recurring
lack – no pun intended—of recognition of null pronouns and prepositions in
creolistics despite their significant frequency (cf. Robertson 2011 on Chinook
Jargon). 

This volume's limitations are vastly outweighed by its successes, from its
ample recognition of sociolinguistic variation to its tremendous quantity of
full sentences, dialogue, and sustained text. As a linguist I can readily
envision this book providing ample material toward interesting research papers
in creolistics, syntax, and more. 

I would like to end by mentioning a highly useful substitute in the event that
readers have no access to the preferable resource of a JA-speaking teacher:
the lively Facebook community 'Juba Arabic' (Facebook 2016). Pertinent
questions and structural points are frequently discussed there. 

REFERENCES

Casselman, Bill. [n.d.] All for nought. Feature Column, American Mathematical
Society. Online at
http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-india-zero. 

Facebook. 2016. Juba Arabic. Online at
https://www.facebook.com/arabijuba/?fref=ts. 

Robertson, David Douglas. 2011. Kamloops Chinuk Wawa, Chinuk pipa, and the
vitality of pidgins. PhD dissertation, University of Victoria. Online at
http://hdl.handle.net/1828/3840. 

Robertson, David Douglas. 2016. Review of Nkemngong Nkengasong, A Grammar of
Cameroonian Pidgin. Online at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-3554.html.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

David Douglas Robertson, PhD, is a freelance linguist who specializes in
languages of the historical western North American frontier, both
pidgins/creoles and the Indigenous languages of the region, such as the Salish
family. Current projects include an interlinearized text collection and
dictionary of the Chinook Jargon newspaper ''Kamloops Wawa''. See
http://chinookjargon.com for more information.





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