28.4754, Review: Dhofari Arabic; Semitic; Language Documentation: Davey (2016)

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Subject: 28.4754, Review: Dhofari Arabic; Semitic; Language Documentation: Davey (2016)

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Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2017 16:21:36
From: David Wilmsen [david.wilmsen at gmail.com]
Subject: Coastal Dhofari Arabic

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-2564.html

AUTHOR: Richard J. Davey
TITLE: Coastal Dhofari Arabic
SUBTITLE: A Sketch Grammar
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Brill
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: David Wilmsen, American University of Sharjah

REVIEWS EDITOR: Robert A. Coté

SUMMARY

Richard J. Davey states that his book, “Coastal Dhofari Arabic: A sketch
grammar” is “a comprehensive sketch grammar of a hitherto neglected dialect of
Arabic” (p.1). Indeed, the Arabic dialects of Oman have suffered scholarly
neglect, especially those of southern Oman. A few isolated articles have
addressed certain features of a few Omani dialects. Yet, since Brockett’s 1985
partial description of a northern Omani coastal dialect, Davey’s is one of
only two book-length descriptions of any variety of Omani Arabic. The second
is a dissertation defended in the same year as Davey’s book release (Bettega
2016), the volume under review being a published version with little change or
revision of Davey’s own 2013 University of Manchester dissertation. The only
other complete grammars of Omani Arabic were produced at the turn of the 19th
and 20th centuries (Reinhardt 1894; Rhodokanakis 1908 & 1911), Rhodokanakis
being the sole description of a southern Omani dialect. Each of those was
conducted outside Oman and relied upon only two informants. In contrast,
Davey’s study has the merit of having been conducted in situ with informants
residing in the coastal areas of Dhofār. 

The book comprises ten chapters: An introduction, in which Davey delineates
the aim and scope of the study, gives a brief overview of the geography and
history of the Dhofār region; discusses its linguistic diversity, conducts a
critical review of the literature, especially of the work of Rhodokanakis, and
ends with a description of methodology, and participant demographics. The
eight succeeding chapters present a characteristic descriptive grammar of
coastal Dhofari Arabic (CDA), beginning with chapter 2, which presents the
phonology of CDA. Chapters 3 and 4 examine CDA morphology, with 3 dedicated to
nominal morphology and noun phrases and 4 presenting verbal morphology.
Chapter 5 addresses local relations, temporal relations, and prepositions; 6
adverbs and particles; and 7 syntax. Chapter 9 is a relatively short
presentation of lexical matters. Chapter 10, the final, provides four sample
texts in CDA and their English glosses. Appropriately sandwiched between
syntax and the lexicon is Chapter 8, devoted to grammaticalization in CDA. It
is only here that Davey enters into the realm of theory. This is appropriate
and typical of dialect grammars, which oftentimes involve purely descriptive
presentations of their data free of any overt theoretical orientation.
Accordingly, Davey admits to saving “comment for any theoretical frameworks …
to the relevant chapters where appropriate” (p. 2). 

Accordingly, the book, while directed primarily at Arabic linguistics, will
also furnish a representative introduction to the linguistic structures of
Arabic in general. Davey’s stated intentions intimate as much: 

One of my key intentions in carrying out this study was to provide a set of
linguistic data which could be accessed by other researchers, and presented in
such a way as to promote the inclusion of coastal Dhofari Arabic data in any
wider linguistic study. (p. 3) 

With that, his workmanlike presentation of the basic functioning of CDA
phonological, morphological, and syntactic features should be easily
assimilable to general linguists as an introduction to spoken Arabic in
general. 

EVALUATION

Arabic dialectology has by default taken the work of Rhodokanakis as the
definitive account of the main Arabic dialect of southern Oman. With Davey’s
more complete work, we now have a coherent description of a second major
southern dialect. Just in time, too. For, as Davey describes it, the Arabic
dialect spoken in the coastal areas of the southernmost governorate of Oman,
Dhofār, is on the wane. It is not exactly going extinct; rather it is being
supplanted by or absorbed into an Arabic lingua franca that has, with the
introduction of education in the 1970s and the influx of Arabic-speaking
migrants from other locales, come to prevail in social interactions outside
the home. 

According to Davey, this lingua franca is what he calls “Modern Standard
Arabic” (MSA), identifying that variety as the language of education,
officialdom (p. 9), and the media (pp. 11 & 19–20) in Oman (as, indeed, it is
in all Arabophone countries). What he fails to make clear is that MSA is not
the natively spoken language of anyone but is acquired through education and
used primarily in writing or in declamation. A direct descendent of a formal
language of elocution, oratory, and oracle, codified in the early centuries of
the Arab/Islamic civilization, it has changed little since then. Yet, to the
uninitiated, Davey’s presentation of the uses of MSA in Dhofar would likely
give the impression that this “standard” Arabic might be a de-regionalised
spoken dialect (in Arabic linguistics, called a “koine”). 

Complicating this picture is that southern Arabia is home to several Semitic
minority languages, collectively called Modern South Arabian, the designation
“Arabian” indicating their location and not their distant relationship to
Arabic. These languages are oftentimes also abbreviated MSA. To distinguish
between the two, Davey uses the abbreviation MSAL for the Modern South Arabian
languages. The speakers of these languages, who by necessity must use Arabic
for daily interactions outside their own homes and communities are, he says,
“competent if not fluent speakers of what can best be described as Modern
Standard Arabic, most notably in the generations who have received formal
education since the 1980s” (p. 19).

Yet Davey seems to say of the native speakers of other dialects of Arabic, who
have migrated into the region from northern Oman, Yemen, and the other Gulf
nations, that their lingua franca is not quite MSA. Instead, “the register of
spoken Arabic appeared raised to a more formal level of features which
approached Modern Standard Arabic” (p. 20). As for the native speakers of CDA
themselves, they apparently only speak their local dialect at home or in
social gatherings in which most participants are locals. Otherwise, they, too,
speak MSA, according to Davey:  

All Dhofari Arabic dialects … are quickly being supplanted by MSA. The process
of modernisation, and the introduction of education and government using a
standardized, formal register of Arabic since the mid-1970s, has restricted
the domain in which coastal Dhofari Arabic is now spoken. Arguably, its social
and economic function is also waning as a result, as MSA becomes the more
influential variety outside of the home. (pp. 20–21)
 
Davey appears to imply that, although no one is a native speaker of MSA, most
Dhofaris educated since the 1970s speak it conversationally outside the home.
This is simply unheard of elsewhere. If it were true, it would be a remarkable
success for the Omani education system, unique in the Arabophone world, being
an achievement that has eluded the ministries of education of any other
country in the region, most of which have been attempting to attain such a
goal since well before the mid-1970s. This cries out for further investigation
from linguists interested in standard languages; from education specialists of
the Arabophone world, who are keen to enforce MSA as the standard written and
spoken language in their respective bailiwicks; and certainly from Arabic
sociolinguists, who have been positively obsessed with the interplay between
the Arabic of writing and the Arabic of speech since before sociolinguistics
became a named discipline. 

Against this, Holes, whom Davey’s cites frequently, sees “no likelihood … of
[MSA] ever becoming the everyday form of spoken Arabic for ordinary people”
(2012: 248) in Oman. Rather, there is an emerging “regional standard dialect”
predominating in all the major cities of the Gulf, including Muscat,
“increasingly marked by … the ‘levelling out’ of local peculiarities in favour
of a form of speech that is recognizably ‘Gulf’ but not readily identifiable
with any particular Gulf country” (2016: 268). Johnstone, whose work Davey
also acknowledges, was, in the nineteen-sixties, already aware of a “local
version of the pan-Arab koine … based on one of the high-prestige dialects or
on literary Arabic” (1967: xxviii). So, too, have Arabic sociolinguists long
been familiar with the usage of educated speakers of the language, who hew
assiduously to their native spoken dialects when conversing, the while
eschewing particularly localised vernacularisms and, depending upon the topic
of conversation, resorting to technical vocabulary lifted from the more formal
registers of written discourse. Perhaps this is the situation that Davey is
trying to describe.

What is more, on the operating assumption that MSA is analogous to an older
form of Arabic, Davey frequently poses it as a point of comparison for CDA.
This remains a matter of debate within Arabic linguistics.  Nor does the
analogy always hold. It is likely true of most of the consonant inventory of
CDA, which, with few exceptions does share its consonants with MSA (Watson
2002: 13), when declaimed aloud, including the interdentals [ð] and [θ],
realized in many other dialects as [z] or [d] and [t] or [s] respectively.
Likewise that pronounced in CDA and declaimed MSA as a voiceless uvular stop
[q] (p. 45). This one of the most variable amongst Arabic dialects, commonly
exhibiting the reflexes [q], [g], [k], [ʤ], and [ʔ]. It is generally
reconstructed to a Proto-Semitic [q] (Watson 2002: 17), meaning that its
realization as [q] is likely an original feature. On the other hand, the
voiced velar stop [g] of CDA (ibid), variously realized in the dialects as
[g], [ʤ], [ʒ], or [j], among others. Often characterized as an emblematic
feature of Egyptian Arabic, sometimes considered innovative in that locale
(Woidich and Zack 2009), its presence in Yemen and Oman marks it as the older
form, likely original to Proto-Semitic (Watson 2002: 3 & 15–16). That would
mean that the [ʤ] as it is realized in declamations of MSA is the later
innovation. The presence of these two consonants and the interdentals marks
CDA as an ancient variety of Arabic, perhaps predating the variety that
eventually became MSA. 

Such objections are likely of more concern to the dialectology and historical
linguistics of Arabic than they are to the wider field of linguistics. 

Accordingly, Davey’s presentation of CDA phonology and morphology is a
straightforward treatment of the root and pattern system of Arabic in general,
but he is always keen to remark features of interest to Arabists that general
linguistics might find unremarkable. One of these is the elision of unstressed
vowels in open syllables, yielding word-initial two-consonant clusters
(discussed in sections 2.7 – 2.7.3): CCVC. This is a shared feature of many of
the spoken Arabic varieties of Oman (Holes 1989: 448–9 & 452–4; 1996: 39–40 &
43). It applies to nouns as well as verbs, resulting in the reduction of the
characteristic basic verb template CaCaC to an initial consonant cluster and a
lengthened second vowel: CCāC (pp. 111–112). This is rare in other Arabic
varieties and impermissible in MSA. So, too, are the CDA three-consonant
clusters at morpheme boundaries, of the shape CvCC-Cv(C), discussed in 2.7.4.

Likewise, the treatment of demonstratives in section 3.5.2., will add to the
inventories of such things attracting attention in Arabic historical
linguistics (cf. Magidow 2016), but would likely be of purely typological
interest to general linguistics. So, too, would the discussion of the obscure
existential particle šē (section 7.1.4). This, too, will add to the inventory
of numerous existential particles known to Arabic (Eid 2008: 84), again, just
in time, as it, too, appears to be on the wane in favour of another common
Arabic existential deriving from a preposition (fī), meaning ‘in’ (Holes 1990:
71). Davey appears to be aware of this (p. 171, n. 2). 

With the discussion of grammaticalization, general linguists will feel
themselves more at home. Davey begins the chapter with a summary overview of
grammaticalization theory, illustrating it with examples from Arabic, then
narrowing the discussion to Semitic languages first, followed by the
particulars of CDA, justifying this by claiming rightly, ‘the provision of
further data [i.e., from CDA] adds to the existing corpus of data” (p. 226).
Even here, however, the grams that Davey addresses fit themselves more readily
into the dialogue about Arabic, even while his clear discussions of them will
certainly achieve his aim of making them accessible to linguists attentive to
grammaticalization theory. This is especially so of the analytic genitive
construction (AGC), a widely discussed phenomenon in Arabic dialectology,
familiar to general linguistics for its prominence in English. Davey eschews
the term, almost exclusive to Arabic linguistics, “genitive exponent” in
favour of the more general “linker” precisely “in order to facilitate clearer
cross-linguistic comparison” (p. 227, n. 4). Contrary to the conclusion of the
major work on the AGC in Arabic dialects (Harning 1980), basing itself upon
Rhodokanakis, that, “the AGC is essentially absent from the dialect” (p. 228),
which Davey attributes “to the lack of published data on Omani dialects as a
whole” (ibid), he finds:

The AGC is far more common in CDA than was previously thought, and can express
a variety of different possessive relationships. Perhaps what is more striking
is that … [two forms] … are used in AGCs, whereas in other Arabic dialects
only a single possessive linker occurs. The existence of two possessive
linkers in CDA may be the remnants of a more complex historical system. (ibid)
        
REFERENCES

Bettega, Simone. 2016. Syntactic Issues in Modern Omani Arabic, PhD
dissertation, Università degli studi di Torino.

Brockett, A. A. 1985. The Spoken Arabic of Khābūra. Manchester: University of
Manchester.

Eid, Mushira. 2008. “Locatives,” in Kees Versteegh, Mushira Eid, Alaa
Elgibaly, Manfred Woidich, and Andzrej Zaborski (eds.) Encyclopedia of Arabic
Language and Linguistics. Leiden: Brill, 80–88.

Eksell-Harning, K. 1980. The Analytic Genitive in Modern Arabic Dialects.
Göteborg:
Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.

Holes, Clive. 1989. “Towards a Dialect Geography of Oman,” Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African Studies LII, 446–62.

Holes, Clive. 1990. Gulf Arabic. Oxford: Routledge.

Holes, Clive. 1996. “The Arabic Dialects of South Eastern Arabia in a
Socio-historical Perspective,” Zeitschrift für arabische Linguistik XXXI,
34–56.

Holes, Clive. 2012. “The Omani Arabic Dialects in Their Regional Context:
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” in Najma Al Zidjaly (ed.) Building Bridges:
Integrating Language, Linguistics, Literature, and Translation in English
Studies. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Holes, Clive. 2016. “Language, Culture, and Identity,” in J. E. Peterson (ed.)
The Emergence of the Gulf States. London: Bloomsbury, 263–287.

Johnstone, T. M. 1967. Eastern Arabian Dialect Studies. London: Oxford
University Press.

Magidow, Alexander. 2016. “Diachronic Dialect Classification Using
Demonstratives,” Al-Arabiyya: Journal of the American Association of Teachers
of Arabic, 49: 91–115.

Reinhardt, Carl. 1894. Ein Arabischer Dialekt Gesprochen in Oman und Zanzibar.
Berlin: W. Spemann.

Rhodokanakis, Nicholas. 1908 & 1911. Der Vulgarärabische Dialekt im Dofâr,
(Zfâr) Vols. 1 & 2. Wien: A. Hölder.

Watson, Janet C. E. 2002. The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

Woidich, Manfred and Liesbeth Zack. 2009. “The g/ǧ Question in Egyptian Arabic
Revisited,” in Enam Al-Wer and Rudolph DeJong (eds.) Arabic Dialectology: In
honour of Clive Holes on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Leiden: Brill,
41–60.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

David Wilmsen is Head of the Arabic and Translation Studies Department at the
American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. He has spent more
than twenty years in the Arabophone world, at the American University of
Beirut and the American University in Cairo. His research interests encompass
the history of the Arabic dialects; their relationship to MSA; and the
development of various syntactic features, especially object markers,
interrogatives, negators, and existential particles. He is currently involved
in documenting the Levantine Arabic features in the peripheral Arabic variety
Maltese and in exploring manifestations of the Arabic negative existential
cycle.





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