Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics
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Subject: Language And Linguistics
Managing Editors Online Edition: Lutz Edzard and Rudolf de Jong
The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online comprehensively covers all aspects of Arabic languages and linguistics. It is interdisciplinary in scope and represents different schools and approaches in order to be as objective and versatile as possible. The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online is cross-searchable and cross-referenced, and is equipped with a browsable index. All relevant fields in Arabic linguistics, both general and language specific are covered and the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online includes topics from interdisciplinary fields, such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and computer science.
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The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online comprehensively covers all aspects of Arabic languages and linguistics. It is interdisciplinary in scope and represents different schools and approaches in order to be as objective and versatile as possible. The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online is cross-searchable and cross-referenced, and is equipped with a browsable index. All relevant fields in Arabic linguistics, both general and language specific are covered and the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online includes topics from interdisciplinary fields, such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and computer science.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Ḍād
(1,254 words)
Ḍād is the name of the 15th letter of the Arabic alphabet, denoting nowadays a voiced velarized (emphatic) dental stop /ḍ/ IPA [d̴]. The sound denoted by this letter must have had a special status in Classical Arabic since the language is sometimes called
luġat aḍ-ḍād, which probably indicates that the grammarians believed this particular sound was unique to Arabic (Ibn Jinnī,
Sirr I, 214.14:
wa-ʿlam ʾanna ḍ-ḍād li-l-ʿArab xāṣṣa). Sībawayhi (
Kitāb II, 405.8–9) describes its place of articulation as being “between the first part of the side of the tongue and the adjacent molars” (
min bayna…
Date:
2018-04-01
Damascus Arabic
(6,059 words)
1. General Damascus Arabic (
llahže ššāmiyye) is spoken in Damascus, capital of the Syrian Arab Republic (1.6 million people in 2004; 3.5 million including Greater Damascus, with an important proportion of non-native speakers: immigrants from various parts of the country, Palestinians). In the old villages of the surrounding Ġūṭa different dialects are spoken, which have not yet been studied. Damascus Arabic is well understood in the whole country, and in Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. Contiguous to the Damascus area are the Qalamūn dialects in the north, the Ḥōrān di…
Date:
2018-04-01
Ḍamīr
(3,161 words)
In Medieval Arabic grammatical literature, the concept of
ḍamīr ‘pronoun’ (pl.
ḍamāʾir) constitutes a subcategory of
kināya ‘proform’. The term
kināya refers to a nominal substitute realized either as a vague noun such as
fulān ‘so-and-so’,
kayta wa-kayta ‘such and such’ and
kaḏā wa-kaḏā ‘so-and-so many’, or otherwise as a pronoun.
Kināya is thus a device used for the sake of vagueness or economy. The
ḍamīr, as a special case of
kināya, is used as a short version of the noun and often serves for disambiguation. Ibn Yaʿīš (
Šarh III, 84) explains that, whereas in
zaydun faʿala zaydun ‘Zayd, Z…
Date:
2018-04-01
D (Derendiger, R. - ditransitive)
(1,883 words)
Derendiger, R. Lingua Franca, Pidgin Arabic: Bongor Arabic derivation ʾAṣl, Biradicalism, Compounds, Derivation, First Language Acquisition, Glide, Inflection, Ištiqāq, Minimalism, Morphology, Noun, Root, Ṣarf, Terminology, Verb, Verb, Verb derivation, acquisition of First Language Acquisition derivation, crashing of Minimalism derivation, formal Derivation derivation, pattern Derivation derived Form Fiʿl, South Semitic Languages, Verb derived stem South Semitic Languages derived structure Transformational Grammar Derman, M. Ugur Nastaʿlīq, Ruqʿa, Second…
Date:
2018-04-01
D (Ditters, Everhard - Dzhalil, Ordikhane)
(949 words)
Ditters, Everhard Computational Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Maṣdar, Noun Phrase, Second Language Teaching, Verbal Noun divergence Convergence, Convergence, Grammaticalization, Grammaticalization, History of Arabic divergence of speech Speech Accommodation dīwān Palaeography dīwānī Ruqʿa, Script and Art Dixit, R. Prakash Voice (Phonetics) Diyāb, Maḥmūd Dialect Literature Diyarbakır Anatolian Arabic, Anatolian Arabic, Anatolian Arabic Diyarbakır Arabic Cypriot Maronite Arabic, Dialects: Classification, Iraq, Relative Pronoun (Arabic Dialects) Djajadinin…
Date:
2018-04-01
D (/ḍ/, lateral - Dereli, Belgin)
(1,631 words)
/ḍ/, lateral Andalusi Arabic D’Andrea, Daniel Language Loss daanu leer Senegal daara Senegal, Senegal dabba Abbreviations Dabba Arabic Luġa, Pre-Islamic Arabic ḍabṭ Muḥaqqaq ḍād Ḍād, Hausa, Majhūra/Mahmūsa, Mechanisms of Linguistic Change, Phonetics, Phonological Merger, Semitic Languages, Somali, South Semitic Languages, Tamil, Yemen ḍād ḍaʿīfa Ḍād ḍād, luġat aḍ- Ḍād Dadan Old Arabic (Epigraphic), Thamudic, Thamudic Dadanitic Northwest Arabian Arabic, Northwest Arabian Arabic, Old Arabic (Epigraphic), Old Arabic (Epigraphic), Thamudic, Thamudic Ḏ̣afīr Najdi Arab…
Date:
2018-04-01
Declension
(2,582 words)
1. Definition In general,
declension affects the nouns, adjectives, articles, numerals, and pronouns of a language (as opposed to
conjugation, which affects finite verb forms). In Classical Arabic, the nouns, adjectives, numerals (except those from 11 to 19), as well as the dual forms of the demonstrative pronoun (near deixis) and the relative pronoun are subject to declension. According to native Arabic grammatical theory, nouns are either
muʿrab ‘declinable’ or (in rare cases)
mabnī ‘indeclinable’. Declinable nouns are then
munṣarif ‘declined with nunation (
tanwīn)’ or
ġayr m…
Date:
2018-10-01
Defective Verbs
(866 words)
Amongst those verbs that have either a semi-vowel or a
hamza as one element of their root only a few irregularities tend to occur. Moreover, these irregularities are restricted to certain frequently used verbs, which in some forms lose the weak element, e.g. the loss of
hamza in some forms of the common verb
raʾā/yar(ʾ)ā ‘to see’ (weak verbs). Apart from this, there are some verbs and verbal expressions that are defective and/or which can only partly be subsumed under the usual verbal paradigms. 1. Defective verbs Defective verbs show normal conjugation patterns but certain gramma…
Date:
2018-04-01
Deixis
(2,985 words)
1. Definition The term ‘deixis’ (also
deictic expressions or
shifters) indicates a group of linguistic elements attested in all languages, whose meaning necessarily implies a return to the uttering act in order to find a particular referent. ‘Deixis’ is a borrowing from Ancient Greek, which originally signified ‘the action of showing’. In fact, deixis draws the attention of the interlocutor(s) to a referent that is present in the situation of communication through the aid of specific words, such as demonstratives in
Look at this beautiful painting!, which might be said while vis…
Date:
2018-04-01
Demonstratives
(2,513 words)
Demonstratives in Arabic dialects have different forms, depending on the region. In order to describe the main paradigms, this entry generalizes as much as possible and describes their general features rather than individual dialectal details. In all Arabic dialects, there are two series of demonstratives, one conveying the idea of near deixis, with respect to the speaker, ‘this, these’, the other the idea of far deixis, which is associated with the interlocutor, ‘that, those’. This difference is not limited to a space opposition near/far…
Date:
2018-04-01
Dependency Grammar
(5,311 words)
Overview Dependency Grammar is an approach to the analysis of sentence structure that is represented by numerous theoretical frameworks in modern linguistics. It is based on concepts which have a long pedigree in the study of grammar, and are prominent in medieval Arabic grammatical theory. Dependency Grammar is based on the concept of the “dependency structure”, where a dominant word – the ‘head’ – is directly linked to one or more ‘dependents’ in an asymmetric relationship called a ‘dependency…
Date:
2018-04-01
Derivation
(4,488 words)
1. Introduction In Indo-European languages, ‘derivation’ is usually defined as “the formation of a new word or inflectable stem from another word or stem. It typically occurs by the addition of an affix” (<http://www.sil.org/linguistics/Glossary>). In Semitic languages and particularly in (Classical) Arabic, this type of derivation does exist but must be considered marginal. More central is a type of derivation in which a word is not derived from another word, but from a root ‘crossed’ with a pattern (or ‘scheme’, from the French
schème, or ‘template’). Where French-speaking scho…
Date:
2018-04-01
Determiners
(2,053 words)
Determiners, which are a class of noun modifiers used to express or identify the reference of a noun, include in Arabic articles, possessive pronouns, and demonstratives. Quantifiers, the class of noun modifiers used to specify the quantity of a noun, are sometimes considered as part of the class of determiners, inasmuch as they restrict the reference of a noun to a specific or indefinite quantity. The distribution and syntax of quantifiers differs from that of the other determiners and can ther…
Date:
2018-04-01