The Arabic Language

-in- 
in participles with a pronominal object 
(see Chapter 15, p. 287), for example, Uzbekistan Arabic 
zorb-in-nā-kum 
‘we have 
hit you’, and Nigerian Arabic 
kātb-in-he 
‘she has written it’. From the comparison 
of forty-nine features, Owens concludes (2006: 155) that these two varieties have 
more in common with each other than with varieties that are geographically 
much closer to them, which means they must have a common ancestor from the 
pre-diasporic period, probably located in the Arabian peninsula. He links this 
with the migration of the Qays tribal confederation, who migrated both to the 
east and to the west and brought this feature with them in both areas.
Whether the similarities between the dialects are the result of a common 
origin or a secondary process of convergence, there are many differences between 
the dialects, too. In the theory of polygenesis, these are regarded as the natural 
outcome of the independent development of colloquial varieties. The linguistic 
input in all regions outside the original tribal area was more or less the same (the 
type of speech spoken by the Arab armies), but the local circumstances differed 
because of the presence of other languages in the region into which Arabic was 
introduced. When the speakers of these languages came into contact with Arabic, 

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The Emergence of New Arabic 
141
they started speaking this new language in their own way, introducing the kind 
of interference that takes place in any process of second-language learning. In 
the course of time, these local ways of speaking developed into local dialects of 
Arabic, when the speakers of the original language shifted to Arabic.
In the case of Berber, the original language triggering the deviations is still 
spoken in approximately the same area, even though some Berber speakers have 
now given up their own language. In such a case, it is customary to speak of an 
adstratal language. Interference in the realisation of Arabic by speakers of this 
adstratal language is to be expected. Thus, for the Algerian dialect of Djidjelli, Ph. 
Marçais (n.d.) traces a number of phenomena to the surrounding Berber dialects. 
Berber influence is first of all demonstrated by the presence of more than 150 
words of Berber origin with the prefix 
a-
, for example, 
agméz
‘thumb’, 
arīsek
‘black
-
bird’, 
aġrūm
‘bread’. The use of this prefix has spread to words of Arabic origin 
as well, for example, 
asdér
‘breast’ (Classical Arabic 
ṣadr
), 
ažnéḥ
‘wing’ (Classical 
Arabic 
janāḥ
), 
aqṭōṭ
‘cat’ (Classical Arabic 
qiṭṭ
), 
aḥmír
‘donkey’ (Classical Arabic 
ḥimār
, pl. 
ḥamīr
). In most words the prefix may be omitted, so that both 
asdér
and 
sdér
are heard. The origin of the Berber prefix is obscure, but contempo-
rary speakers seem to regard it as a definite article: when it is used in a word, it 
cannot be combined with the Arabic article. Marçais also mentions a few syntactic 
phenomena. Certain nouns change their gender under the influence of the Berber 
equivalents: 
lḥém
‘meat’, for instance, is feminine (like Berber 
tifi
), and 
ržél
‘foot, 
leg’ is masculine (like Berber 
aḍar
). The word 
má
‘water’ is plural in Djidjelli Arabic 
like its Berber equivalent 
aman
. In possessive constructions with kinship names, 
the first word carries a pronominal suffix, for example, 
ḫtú ddǝ-mḥǝmmed
sister-
his of-Muḥammad ‘Muḥammad’s sister’. Djidjelli Arabic also uses a presentative