The Arabic Language

q
: side 
by side, we find here 
gidir
‘pot’ and 
qalb
‘heart’ (cf. above, p. 180). Sometimes, but 
not always, the variants belong to different dialect regions, for example, the word 
for ‘heart’ in the Jeinau dialect is given as 
galib
. In the group of interdentals, the 
situation is similar: the usual reflex of the Classical interdentals must have been 
ṯ
, 
ḏ
, 
ḏ̣
, which, probably under Tajik influence, developed into 
s
, 
z
, 
ẓ
, for example, 
sīb
‘cloth’ < 
ṯawb
, 
orẓ
‘earth’ < 
ʾarḍ
. It appears that in most cases emphatic consonants 
were de-velarised, so that 
ḏ̣
becomes simple 
z
. But in some words the Classical 
interdentals are represented by dentals, for example, in the demonstratives 
hād
, 
hādi
‘this’, and 
dūk
, 
dīki
‘that’.
The definite article of Classical Arabic has disappeared in Uzbekistan Arabic, 
but there is a new indefinite article, 
fat
(< 
fard
), as in Mesopotamian Arabic. In 
the nouns, broken plurals are restricted to a few words; most masculine animate 
nouns have a plural in 
-īn
, for example, 
wazīrīn
‘ministers’, 
uḫwīn
‘brothers’; 
feminine animate and inanimate nouns have the ending 
-āt
, for example, 
ummāt
‘mothers’, 
šiyāt
‘things; clothes’ (Classical Arabic 
ʾašyāʾ
), 
rasāt
‘heads’, 
balbeytāt
‘doors’ (< 
bāb il-bēt
‘door of the house’). In nominal phrases, the attribute (adjec
-
tive or relative clause, sometimes a second noun) may be linked to the head noun 
with the help of the suffix 
-in
or 
-hin
, as in (8)–(13), taken from Fischer (1961):
(8) 
mu-hin 
aḥmar
water-LINK 
red 
‘the golden water [i.e., tea]’
(9) 
šiyāt-in 
ġāli ġāli
clothes-LINK expensive
2
‘very expensive goods’
(10) 
fat 
ḥajart-in kabīra
INDEF.ART 
stone-LINK 
big
‘a large stone’
(11)
fat 
bint-in 
tibki
 
INDEF.ART 
girl-LINK cry.3fs
‘a girl who is crying’
(12) 
ādami-n 
min 
alla 
il 
mi-ḫōf
 
man-LINK 
from 
God 
REL 
CONT-fear.3ms
‘a man who fears God’
(13) 
nuṣṣ-in 
lēl
 
middle-LINK 
night
‘the middle of the night’

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Arabic as a Minority Language 
287
This suffix is probably related to the 
-in/-an 
marker in Arabian dialects (Chapter 
11, p. 193).
In the verbal system, the participle has become the current form for completed 
actions, and it has lost its nominal functions. In combination with pronominal 
suffixes, the participial forms have undergone a re-analysis in the following 
way. From 
zōrib
‘he has hit’ (< 
ḍārib
‘hitting’) with the pronominal object suffix, 
zorb-in-nī
‘he has hit me’, a new form with pronominal subject suffix was devel-
oped, 
zorbin-ī
, meaning ‘I have hit’; in the same way 
zorbin-ak
‘you have hit’. In 
their turn, these forms may be connected with objective suffixes, for example, 
zorbinīk
‘I have hit you [masculine singular]’, 
zorbināh
‘I have hit him’, 
zorbinīhim
‘I have hit them’; 
zorbinakāni
‘you [masculine singular] have hit me’, 
zorbinakāh
‘you [masculine singular] have hit him’, 
zorbinakāhum
‘you [masculine singular] 
have hit them’. A similar 
-in-
infix in constructions of the active participle with 
object pronoun occurs in widely dispersed dialects in Oman, Bahrain, Yemen and 
in Bagirmi Arabic (Owens 2006: 159–62).
Uzbekistan Arabic is unique among Arabic dialects in having a word order 
Subject–Object–Verb, as against Subject–Verb–Object in all other dialects. This 
word order may have originated as a stylistic alternative to the normal word 
order, in which the object was fronted. In an environment in which Uzbek (a verb-
final Turkic language) was spoken, the alternative word order was reinforced and 
became the canonical one. When the object is definite, there is a resumptive suffix 
in the verb. As a result, we now find in Uzbekistan Arabic sentences such as (14) 
and (15) taken from Fischer (1961):
(14) 
fat 
ādami 
baqar-īn 
INDEF.ART 
man 
cows-PL
kom-mi-sūq-nāyim
PAST-CONT-tend.3ms-CONT
‘A man was tending cows’
(15) 
zaġīr 
ḥajara 
fīd-u 
ḫadā-ha
 
young 
stone 
hand-3ms take.PERF.3ms-3fs
‘The young man took the stone in his hand’
A similar order applies to other sentence constituents such as the predicate, as 
in (16):
(16) 
ʿō 
sámaka 
anā 
ma-ṣōr-mi
 
still
fish 
I 
CONT-remain1s-INTERROG
‘Shall I then remain a fish?’
If the explanation given above is correct, this would be a good example of a 
change that started as a stylistic discourse alternative that was reinforced by the 
influence of Uzbek, the dominant adstratal language.

---

288
The Arabic Language
Text 4 Uzbekistan Arabic (after Vinnikov 1956: 192)
1.
 fat šī il mebīʿ kon, fat walád kun ʿéndu, 
fat bint kun ʿéndu, bíntu i-ḫaṭīb sabára
1. There was a trader, he had a son, 
he had a daughter, he promised his 
daughter to the preacher.
2.
 šī šarā, wey wáladu i-fat madínt-in 
wáḥad ġadāk šī taybīʿ
2. He bought something, with his son 
he went to a city in order to sell 
something.
3.
 ḫaṭīb i-máratu qōl: hamat bínt šī il mebīʿ 
iláy wurīya; bint kun tístaḥi mínnu
3. The preacher said to his wife: ‘Show 
me this daughter of the trader’. The 
girl was ashamed before him.
4.
 mart ḫaṭīb qōlet: mawūra iléyk! ana 
móġdi fi béyta, rāsi fi giddāma maḥeṭṭā
h
 
tatfillā
h
; hint min waro ḥāyṭ ʿáyyin, 
miššūfa
4. The wife of the preacher said: ‘I’ll 
show her to you! I’ll go to her house, 
put my head before her, in order for 
her to clean it; you look from behind 
the wall, you’ll see her!’