Arabic-L:LING:Al-3abd Allaah

[Dilworth Parkinson]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arabic-L: Fri 01 Aug 2008
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu]
[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to
listserv at byu.edu with first line reading:
            unsubscribe arabic-l                                      ]

-------------------------Directory------------------------------------

1) Subject:Al-3abd Allaah

-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------
1)
Date: 01 Aug 2008
From:Dil Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
Subject:Al-3abd Allaah

I cannot fully answer the query about why this name has an article on  
what appears to be the first term of an idaafa.  However, running the  
form through arabiCorpus.byu.edu, I get the following interesting  
results:

search string: Alcbd ?Allh
Total found: 1753  (2.02 per 100000 words)

When divided by the separate newspapers in the corpus, we find:

Watan(Kuwait)	787	12.19 per 100000
Hayat96(London but basically Levantine)	365	1.69 per 100000
Hayat97(London but basically Levantine)	269	1.38 per 100000
Thawra(Syria)	237	1.42 per 100000
Ahram(Egypt)	89	0.54 per 100000
Tajdid(Morocco)	1	.03 per 100000

Clearly it is a common name, but ONLY in the Gulf area: the Kuwaiti  
paper has the name almost 10 times as frequently as anywhere else, and  
Egypt and North Africa seem to have almost none of it.
One would venture a guess that this is some kind of beduinized  
structure (??).

dil


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Arabic-L:  01 Aug 2008
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/arabic-l/attachments/20080801/45f7dbc4/attachment.htm>