Papers presented at a colloquium held in November 2013 in Leiden on the theme of "Arabic in Context," organised on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Leiden's chair in Arabic. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Contents:
What is Arabic? -- Arabic in its Semitic context / John Huehnergard -- How conservative and how innovating is Arabic? / Andrzej Zaborski -- Arabic in its epigraphic context. The 'ayn 'abada inscription forty years later: a reassessment / Manfred Kropp -- Aramaic or Arabic? the Nabataeo-Arabic script and the language of the inscriptions written in this script / Laila Nehme -- Graeco-Arabica I: the Southern Levant / Ahmad al-Jallad -- Classical Arabic in context. Traces of South Arabian causative-reflexive verbal stem in Arabic lexicon? / Daniele Mascitelli -- Arabic alladi / IIIi as Subordinators: An Alternative Perspective / Lutz Edzard -- Raphelengius vindicatus: the earliest translations of Hebrew Hebrew_start 'dm Hebrew_end into Arabic / Jordi Ferrer i Serra -- Terminative-adverbial and locative-adverbial endings in Semitic languages: a reassessment and its implications for Arabic / Francesco Grande -- On the middle Iranian borrowings in Qur'anic (and pre-Islamic) Arabic / Johnny Cheung -- Qur'anic Arabic in context. Traces of bilingualism/multilingualism in Qur'anic Arabic / Guillaume Dye -- A Syriac reading of the Qur'an? the case of Surat al-Kawtar / Martin F.J. Baasten -- Middle and modern Arabic in context. Orthography and reading in medieval Judaeo-Arabic / Geoffrey Khan -- Linguistic history and the history of Arabic: a speech communities approach / Alexander Magidow -- Digging up archaic features: "neo-Arabic" and comparative Semitic in the quest for proto Arabic / Na'ama Pat-El -- The Arabic strata in Awjila Berber / Marijn van Putten and Adam Benkato.
Summary:
The writing of Arabic's linguistic history is by definition an interdisciplinary effort, the result of collaboration between historical linguists, epigraphists, dialectologists, and historians. The present volume seeks to catalyse a dialogue between scholars in various fields who are interested in Arabic's past and to illustrate how much there is to be gained by looking beyond the traditional sources and methods. It contains 15 innovative studies ranging from pre-Islamic epigraphy to the modern spoken dialect, and from comparative Semitics to Middle Arabic. The combination of these perspectives hopes to stand as an important methodological intervention, encouraging a shift in the way Arabic?'s linguistic history is written.
Series:
Studies in Semitic languages and linguistics ; volume 89
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.