The Arabic Language
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| 4.2 The pre-Islamic dialects
Since our data are fragmentary, it is difficult to assess their value, let alone set up a dialect map of the pre-Islamic peninsula (see Map 4.1 for the distribution of our information on the pre-Islamic dialects). The following nine phonological features are frequently mentioned as major differences between the two groups of pre-Islamic dialects. First, in the Eastern dialects, final consonant clusters did not contain a vowel, whereas in the Western dialects they had an epenthetic vowel, for example (West/East), ḥusun / ḥusn ‘beauty’, faḫiḏ / fiḫḏ ‘thigh’, kalima / kilma ‘word’, ʿunuq / ʿunq ‘neck’. This difference is probably connected with a difference in stress: 48 The Arabic Language Map 4.1 Available data on the pre-Islamic dialects (after Rabin 1951: 14) it may be surmised that the Eastern dialects had a stronger expiratory stress, hence the absence of the unstressed vowel. A certain amount of mixing must have taken place because in Classical Arabic sometimes the one, sometimes the other, sometimes both variants have survived. Second, the Eastern dialects must have known some form of vowel harmony or assimilation, for example (West/East), baʿīr / biʿīr ‘camel’, minhum / minhim ‘from them’. This feature, too, may be connected with the presence of a strong expira - tory stress in the Eastern dialects, which encourages assimilation. The Classical language retained the assimilation in those cases where the suffix was preceded by i , for example, fīhim ‘in them’ (where the Ḥijāz had fīhum without assimilation). Third, the long vowel ā underwent ʾimāla ‘inclination’, that is, a fronted pronunciation of the vowel towards [æː] or [ɛː], in the Eastern dialects, whereas the Western dialects were characterised by what the grammarians call tafḫīm . Usually, this term indicates the central back pronunciation of /ā/ as [ɑː] after an Arabic in the Pre-Islamic Period 49 emphatic (velarised) consonant, but here it probably indicates the pronuncia - tion as a ‘pure’ ā [aː], or perhaps in some cases as a rounded [ɒː] or even as ō [ɔː], namely, in those words which are indicated in Qurʾānic spelling with a wāw , for example, ṣalāt , zakāt , ḥayāt , possibly also in other words, for example, salām . In the Nabataean inscriptions long ā is sometimes spelled with w , which may reflect an Aramaic pronunciation with ō (cf. above, p. 33). Fourth, the Western dialects may have known a phoneme / ē / : according to the grammarians verbs such as ḫāfa ‘to fear’, ṣāra ‘to become’ were pronounced with ʾimāla . But since the ʾimāla was otherwise unknown in the Ḥijāz and, moreover, never occurs in the neighbourhood of an emphatic or velar consonant, the grammarians’ remark may refer to the existence of an independent phoneme /ē/. It is unlikely that this ē continues a proto-Semitic ē ; perhaps the sound meant by the grammarians had developed from a diphthong -ay- instead (cf. also above, on Ṣafāʾitic diphthongs, Chapter 3, p. 30). Fifth, the passive of the so-called hollow verbs with a medial Yüklə 2,37 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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