Urbanization and the Development of Gender in the Arabic Dialects
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5617/jais.4640Abstract
This article makes the claim that the difference between Bedouin and urban dialects of Arabic in gender representation in the plural is a function of the urbanization process the urban dialects of Arabic went through in the 7th century in the conquered territories. Contact-induced linguistic processes of koineization and structural simplification in the newly established urban centers in the Middle East and North Africa helped enhance the gender development that was already in effect before the Arab conquests. By comparing Bedouin and urban dialects to Classical Arabic, the article establishes that the three varieties were in a process of development in gender. Classical Arabic stopped at a particular stage, and Bedouin and urban dialects continued. Comparing Central Asian dialects to urban dialects of Egypt we can see that at least to the 8th century gender was a common feature of Peninsular dialects. The article concludes by stating that the urban dialects developed further to lose all gender distinction in the plural because of the leveling and borrowing processes of the koineization in the urban centers in their formative period.
Keywords: Contact Arabic, feminine gender, development, koineization, simplification, Foreigner Talk
Downloads
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
For content published in editions of JAIS before 2002, copyright belongs to the author. Content published between 2002 and 2017 is copyrighted by Edinburgh University Press (reproduced on FRITT with permission). Text and other material published in these journal volumes can only be shared and republished with written permission from the rights holders.
Starting from 2017, the content published in JAIS is - unless otherwise is stated - licensed through Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Through this licence content can be copied and distributed but also remixed, transformed and built upon for any purpose under the following conditions:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit to the creators of materials published in JAIS, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notice: No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
Authors who publish in JAIS accept the following conditions:
Author(s) retains copyright to the article and give JAIS right to first publication while the article is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0. This license allows sharing the article for non-commercial purposes, as long as the author and first publishing place JAIS are credited. The license does not allow others to publish adapted versions of the article without the author's permission.
The author is free to publish and distribute the work/article after publication in JAIS, as long as the journal is referred to as the first place of publication. Submissions that are under consideration for publication or accepted for publication in JAIS cannot simultaneously be under consideration for publication in other journals, anthologies, monographs or the like. By submitting contributions, the author accepts that the contribution is published in both digital and printed editions of JAIS.