The Arabic Language

kūt
, 
kū
) and the anterior past (
kǝ
, 
kān
, 
kāt
with the perfect verb).
A major innovation is the development of a copula from the personal pronoun, 
usually placed after the predicate. In the dialect of Qarṭmīn (Jastrow 1978: 131–42), 
for instance, we find sentences such as (2)–(5):
(2) 
ṯǝmm 
ǝj-jǝbb 
ḏayyǝq-we
opening 
the-well 
narrow-COP.3ms
‘The opening of the well is narrow’ (-
we
< 
huwa
)
(3) 
ǝl-mērje 
mfállate-ye
the-meadow 
without.an.owner-COP.3fs
‘The meadow is without an owner’ (
-ye 
< 
hiya
)

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Arabic as a Minority Language 
283
(4) 
ǝnti 
mǝ́n-ǝnti?
 
PRON.2ms 
who-COP.2ms
‘Who are you?’
(5) 
žib-u
wolf-COP.3ms 
‘(It) is the wolf’
A further development is the combination of the demonstrative copula with the 
demonstrative elements 
k-
and 
hā-
, as in (6) and (7) from the same dialect:
(6) 
ǝbn-u 
k-ū 
qǝddām 
ǝmm-u
 
son-3ms
 
DEM-COP.3ms 
before 
mother-3ms
‘His son is before his mother’
(7) 
kēh 
maṛa
DEM-COP.3fs 
woman
‘Over there is a woman’ (
kēh
< 
k-
+ 
hā
+ 
hā
) 
The simple copula is also found in the Christian Arabic of Baghdad, but the prolif
-
eration of forms and new functions is only found in Anatolia.
The lexicon of the Anatolian dialects is marked by a large number of loanwords 
from Turkish and Kurdish. Most of the Turkish loans are in the domains of 
administration and the army, for example, (Daragözü) 
damanča
‘pistol’ (Turkish 
tabanca
), 
čǝfta
‘gun’ (Turkish 
çifte
). Some of the Turkish loans are themselves of 
Arabic origin, for example, (Mḥallami) 
ḥaqsǝz
‘unjust’ (Turkish 
haksız
< Arabic 
ḥaqq
‘right’ + Turkish 
sız 
‘without’). The Kurdish loans often concern agricultural and 
household items, such as (Daragözü) 
qāzǝ́ke
‘jar’, 
tōv
‘sowing-seed’, 
jōt
‘plough’, but 
also current words such as 
dōst
‘friend’. The first example contains the Kurdish 
diminutive 
-ik
.
The older loans have been integrated into the language, both phonologically 
and morphologically, for instance, by acquiring their own broken plurals, for 
example, (Mḥallami) 
panṭūr
/
pǝnēṭīr
‘trousers’ (< Turkish 
potur
). In this case, there 
can be no doubt that we are dealing with a real loan. But very often the speakers 
use foreign words without modifying their phonetic shape, even when there is a 
perfectly good synonym available in their own dialect. In such cases, the use of 
the foreign word is triggered by the bilingual situation, which leads the speakers 
to code-switch from their own language to the prestige language. This explains 
the large number of 
ad hoc
loans occurring only once in the corpus that was used 
for a recent count (Vocke and Waldner 1982). According to this count, 24 per 
cent of the lexicon of the Anatolian dialects consists of foreign loans. The dialects 
differ with respect to the language from which they borrow most: in Daragözü 32 
per cent of the lexicon is foreign, of which 5 per cent is Turkish, 12 per cent is 
Kurdish and the rest of unknown etymology, whereas in Mardin, of 15 per cent 

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284
The Arabic Language
foreign loans 12 per cent are Turkish, 0.5 per cent are Kurdish and the rest of 
unknown origin. Most of the foreign loans do not belong to the most frequent 
vocabulary, since in running speech only about 5 per cent of the words are of 
non-Arabic origin.
An interesting phenomenon is the use of verbo-nominal expressions with the 
verb 
sawa
‘to do, make’ of the type that is also found in loans from Arabic in other 
languages (cf. below, Chapter 17). In Anatolian dialects, many expressions of this 
kind are found not only with Turkish words, but also with Arabic words: 
sawa 
talafōn
‘to call by telephone’, 
sawa īšāra
‘to give a sign’, 
sawa mḥāfaza
‘to protect’. In 
all likelihood, these constructions are a calque of Turkish expressions with 
etmek
(cf. below, Chapter 17, p. 326).
Text 3 Daragözü Arabic (after Jastrow 1973: 118)
1.
 lōm mēḥǝd maljalǝm kǝntu qfā lḫašne, 
ġalámi k
ǝ
ẓarbo fāk ǝlpāl, w nā lē 
ʿīyantu šīwaʿd m
ǝ
havṛās-va ījī
1. One day I was with the goats, behind 
the hill, my goats were climbing the 
slope, and suddenly I saw something 
coming from the top of the hill.
2.
 qǝltu wǝḷḷā ukkā īžba zzīb, ʿīyantu zīb-u
2. I said: ‘O, my God, that looks like the 
wolf!’ I looked, it was a wolf.
3.
 hama jā ma jā, rakǝb ǝlġalme, r
ǝ
kába, w 
gǝndāra mfō lḥajǝṛ
3. Right when he came, he jumped 
upon a goat, he jumped upon her, 
and rolled her from the stone.
4.
 nā lē ʿīyantu qōqǝ́ta sāġē fṣǝmmu
4. Suddenly I saw how he took her head 
in his mouth.
5.
 saytu ʿlayu rǝtto hárǝtto, kalb
ǝ
na 
waʿd k
ǝ
fī čāḷo, zīyaqtūllu čāḷo, čāḷo-ji 
mbaržēr-va jā saynu šǝbǝr waʿd ṭalaḥ, 
w-jā ʿlayu
5. I shouted at him 
rǝtto hárǝtto
. We had 
a dog, Čāḷo, I called to him: ’Čāḷo!’ 
Čāḷo came from downhill, his tongue 
hanging out of his mouth, and he 
came upon him.