Elamur Research⌕
☰
home / papers / 2023 / Between Analogy and Language Contact: A Case Study of Grammatical Change in Maghrebi Judaeo-Arabic Dialects

Between Analogy and Language Contact: A Case Study of Grammatical Change in Maghrebi Judaeo-Arabic Dialects

Summary

The paper asks whether analogy, an internal driver of language change, and language contact, an external one, act separately or can reinforce each other. It examines two Jewish Arabic dialects of the Maghreb: sedentary Gabes in southern Tunisia and Wad-Souf in eastern Algeria, which shows many Bedouin traits. The author collected new fieldwork data in Israel and France and compared it with published descriptions of Jewish Tripoli and Jewish Tunis. Five grammatical changes are analysed using two kinds of analogy: extension and reanalysis. Three changes involve verb morphology and two involve syntax. Three of the cases can be explained internally. In the other two, contact appears to have sped up a change that analogy had already set in motion: Berber for the t-passive and Israeli Hebrew for the loss of deflected agreement. The paper concludes that internal and external forces can work together when the result of an analogy matches a form that already exists in the donor language. It also suggests that communities cut off from standard Arabic may regularise their grammar more.

Key points

  • Fieldwork data.
    • Gabes: 8 native speakers (4 men, 4 women), recorded between December 2018 and March 2022.
    • Wad-Souf: 2 speakers, aged 74 and 72, recorded in two 2022 sessions in Israel.
    • Comparison data: Jewish Tripoli from Yoda (2005) and Jewish Tunis from Cohen (1964, 1975).
  • Verb system. The dialects have nine verb stems, including a purely dialectal T-passive. They lack the Old Arabic stems IV and IX, and the XI stem corresponds to the Eastern IX.
  • Internal cases.
    • In Wad-Souf, the third-radical-weak pattern spreads over geminate stem II verbs.
    • Verbs from stem VIII (second radical weak) and stem XI shift to stem I conjugation.
    • The subordinator /bāš/ is reanalysed into a discourse-dependency marker, which the author compares with NENA /t-/.
  • Contact-assisted cases.
    • The /t-/ passive arose by analogy with stems V and VI, supported by Berber /t-/ passives.
    • Plural heads with 3FSG ("deflected") agreement disappeared in favour of strict agreement, helped along by Israeli Hebrew.
    • Optimality Theory constraint ranking is used to explain why Jewish and Muslim dialects diverge on agreement.
  • Community structure. Wad-Souf shows more analogical change than Gabes. Its Jewish community lived in a single quarter, while Gabes Jews lived among Muslim families.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. The paper separates two kinds of change: extension alters a form's surface to fit the dominant paradigm, while reanalysis keeps the surface but gives the form a new function. This split is a clean way to classify any form–function mismatch. — For Mova (tokens): Lemma and tag repair rules could be split the same way, with surface-normalising rules for irregular or nonstandard forms and relabelling rules that keep the token but change its POS or feature reading.
  • I2. A change is treated as more plausible when two independent pressures point to the same target form, here an internal pattern and a contact language. — For Mova (learn): A self-induced repair rule could be promoted only when its output also matches what an independent witness parser or teacher tier produces, so that two unrelated sources must agree.
  • I3. Dialect differences are modelled as different rankings of the same output constraints, for example grammatical agreement ranked against animacy or individuation. Variation is not modelled as separate rule sets. — For Mova (tree): UD dialect conversion could be expressed as one shared set of ranked, explainable constraints, with each treebank or genre defined only by its ranking.
  • I4. The analysis of deflected agreement shows that how a plural noun agrees depends on whether its referent is human or individuated. — For Mova (world): Collective nouns such as "team" or "committee" could be resolved by checking animacy and individuation in the world model, so that singular or plural agreement and pronoun reference stay consistent.
  • I5. The author proposes that communities isolated from a normative standard regularise their grammar more, and treats community structure as a variable that predicts the amount of change. — For Mova (learn): Evaluation could include texts from non-standard or learner-like sources as a separate slice, to measure how far regularised forms degrade tokenisation and parsing.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

Fields: Linguistics & languages

Topics: Semitic languages

Cite

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

@inproceedings{gebski2023between,
  title = {{Between Analogy and Language Contact: A Case Study of Grammatical Change in Maghrebi Judaeo-Arabic Dialects}},
  author = {Gębski, Wiktor},
  booktitle = {Folia Orientalia 60},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.24425/for.2023.148426},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.24425/for.2023.148426}
}

References

71 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

  1. Aguadé, Jordi, and Mohammad Elyaacoubi. 1995. El dialecto árabe de Skura (Marruecos). Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cienti ́ficas. find
  2. Aguadé, Jordi. 2012. ‘Verbs Reflecting Classical Arabic Form IV Patterns in Moroccan Arabic’. Romano-Arabica 12: 7–15. find
  3. Aguadé, Jordi. 2018. ‘The Maghrebi Dialects of Arabic’. In Arabic Historical Dialectology, edited by Clive Holes, 29-64. Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 30. Oxford: Oxford University Press. find
  4. Anderson, John, and Charles Jones, eds. 1974. Historical Linguistics. Volume 1: Syntax, Morphology, Internal and Comparative Reconstruction. Amsterdam: North Holland. find
  5. Archangeli, Diana. 1999. ‘Introducing Optimality Theory’. Annual Review of Anthropology 28 (1): 531–552. find
  6. Arnold, Werner. 1990. Das Neuwestaramäische: V. Grammatik. Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden. find
  7. Bahloul, Maher. 2011. ‘Agreement’. In Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, 1: 43–48, Leiden and Boston: Brill. find
  8. Basset, André. 1950. Initiation à la Tunisie. Paris: Maisonneuve. Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient. find
  9. Behnstedt, Peter. 1998. ‘Zum Arabischen von Djerba (Tunesien) I’. Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 35: 52–83. find
  10. Belnap, Kirk R. 1991. ‘Grammatical Agreement Variation in Cairene Arabic’. PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania. find
  11. Belnap, Kirk R., and Osama Shabaneh. 1992. ‘Variable Agreement and Nonhuman Plurals in Classical and Modern Standard Arabic’. Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics 4: 245–262. find
  12. Belnap, Kirk R., and John Gee. 1994. ‘Classical Arabic in Contact: The Transition to Near-Categorical Agreement Patterns’. Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics 6: 21–149. find
  13. Belnap, Kirk R. 1999. ‘A New Perspective on the History of Arabic Variation in Marking Agreement with Plural Heads’. Folia Linguistica 33 (1–2): 169–186. find
  14. Benkato, Adam. 2014. ‘The Arabic Dialect of Benghazi, Libya: Historical and Comparative Notes’. Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 59: 57–102. find
  15. Bettega, Simone. 2018. ‘Agreement Patterns in Omani Arabic: Sociolinguistic Conditioning and Diachronic Developments’. Sociolinguistic Studies 12 (2): 143–163. find
  16. Bettega, Simone, and Luca D’Anna. 2023. Gender and Number Agreement in Arabic. Leiden and Boston: Brill. find
  17. Blau, Joshua. 1961. Diqduq ha-aravit ha-yehudit shel yamey ha-beynaym [A Grammar of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic]. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. find
  18. Blevins, Jim, and Juliette Blevins. 2009. ‘Introduction: Analogy in Grammar’. In Analogy in Grammar: Form and Acquisition, edited by James P. Blevins and Juliette Blevins, 1–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press. find
  19. Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Henry Holte & Co. find
  20. Brustad, Kristen. 2000. The Syntax of Spoken Arabic. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. find
  21. Bunis, Ivri. 2018. ‘The Morphosyntax of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic from the Byzantine Period’. PhD thesis, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. find
  22. Campbell, Alistair. 1959. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. find
  23. Campbell, Lyle, and Alice C. Harris. 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  24. Cantineau, Jean. 1960. Cours de phonétique arabe. Paris: Klincksieck. find
  25. Caubet, Dominique. 1993. L’arabe marocain. Études chamito-sémitiques. Paris and Louvain: Éditions Peeters. find
  26. Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of Language. New York: Praeger. Cohen, David. 1964–1975. Le parler arabe des juifs de Tunis. 1. Textes et documents. 2. Étude descriptive et historique. The Hague: Mouton. find
  27. Cohen, Marcel. 1912. Le parler arabe des Juifs d’Alger. Paris: Champion. find
  28. Connolly, Magdalen. 2018. ‘Linguistic Variation in Egyptian Judaeo-Arabic Folk Tales and Letters from the Ottoman Period’. PhD thesis, Cambridge: University of Cambridge. find
  29. Cristofaro, Sonia. 2003. Subordination. Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. find
  30. D’Anna, Luca. 2017. ‘Agreement with Plural Controllers in Fezzānī Arabic’. Folia Orientalia 54: 101–123. find
  31. D’Anna, Luca. 2020. ‘Collectives in the Qurʾān Revisited: Another Possibility of Semantic Agreement’. Journal of Semitic Studies 65 (1): 147–169. find
  32. Dror, Yehudit. 2013. ‘Adjectival Agreement in the Qurʾān’. Bulletin d’études orientales 62: 51–76. find
  33. Dror, Yehudit, 2016. ‘Collective Nouns in the Qurʾān: Their Verbal, Adjectival and Pronominal Agreement’. Journal of Semitic Studies 61 (1): 103–137. find
  34. Ferguson, C. A. 1989. ‘Grammatical Agreement in Classical Arabic and the Modern Dialects: A Response to Versteegh’s Pidginization Hypothesis’. Al-ʿArabiyya 22: 5–17. find
  35. Fischer, Wolfdietrich. 2002. A Grammar of Classical Arabic. Translated from German by Jonathan Rodgers. New Haven: Yale University Press. find
  36. Garrett, Andrew. 2008. ‘Paradigmatic Uniformity and Markedness’. In Linguistic Universals and Language Change, edited by Jeff Good, 125–143. Oxford: Oxford University Press. find
  37. Glinert, Lewis. 1989. The Grammar of Modern Hebrew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  38. Grand’Henry, Jacques. 1976. Les parlers arabes de la Région du Mzāb (Sahara Algérien). Leiden: Brill. find
  39. Guerrero, Jairo. 2015. ‘Preliminary Notes on the Current Arabic Dialect of Oran (Western Algeria)’. Romano-Arabica 15: 219–233. ten Hacken, Pius. 2020. ‘Classical Generative Morphology’. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, edited by Mark Aronoff. Accessed 20 February 2023. https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-575?rskey=25UhNt&result=2. ↗
  40. Hary, Benjamin. 2009. Translating Religion: Linguistic Analysis of Judaeo-Arabic Sacred Texts from Egypt. Leiden: Brill. find
  41. Heath, Jeffrey. 2002. Jewish and Muslim Dialects of Moroccan Arabic. Routledge: New York. find
  42. Hofstader, Douglas, and Emmanuel Sander. 2013. Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking. New York: Basic Books. find
  43. Hopper, Paul, and Elisabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  44. Khan, Geoffrey. 2008. The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Barwar. Leiden: Brill. find
  45. Khan, Geoffrey. 2021. ‘Verbal Forms Expressing Discourse Dependency in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic’. In Studies in the Grammar and Lexicon of Neo-Aramaic, edited by Geoffrey Khan and Paul M. Noorlander. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find our card
  46. Kossmann, Maarten. 2002. ‘L’origine de l’aoriste intensif en berbère’. Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris. 97: 353–370. find
  47. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy. 1947. ‘La nature des procès dit analogiques’. Acta Linguistica 5: 17–34. find
  48. Levi, Yaakov. 2013. ‘Agreement: Biblical Hebrew’. In Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, edited by Geoffrey Khan. Accessed 14 April 2023. https://reference-works.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-hebrew-language-and-linguistics/ agreement-biblical-hebrew-EHLL_COM_00000501?s.num=2&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book. encyclopedia-of-hebrew-language-and-linguistics&s.q=agreement. ↗
  49. Madariaga, Nerea. 2017. ‘Reanalysis’. In The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax, edited by Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts, 70–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  50. Manfredi, Stefano, and Mauro Tosco, eds. 2018. Arabic in Contact. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. find
  51. Marçais, Philippe. 1956. Le parler arabe de Djidjelli (nord constantinois Algérie). Paris: Maisonneuve. ̂ Bṛāhîm de Saïda (Département d’Oran). find
  52. Marçais, William. 1908. Le dialecte arabe des Ūlä d Paris: Honoré Champion. find
  53. McMahon, April. 1994. Understanding Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  54. Meillet, Antoine. 1912. ‘L’évolution des formes grammaticales’. Scientia (Rivista di Scienza) 12 : 384–400. Reprint: Meillet, Antoine. 1948. Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. Vol. I. Paris: Champion, 130–148. find
  55. Pereira, Christophe. 2008. ‘Le parler arabe de Tripoli (Libye): phonologie, morphosyntaxe et catégories grammaticales’. PhD thesis, Paris: INALCO. find
  56. Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky. 1991. Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Piscataway, NJ: s.n. find
  57. Procházka, Stephan, and Ines Gabsi. 2017. ‘Agreement with Plural Heads in Tunisian Arabic: The Urban North’. In Tunisian and Libyan Arabic Dialects: Common Trends – Recent Developments – Diachronic Aspects, edited by Veronika Ritt-Benmimoun, 239–260. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza. find
  58. Ratcliffe, Robert. 2011. ‘Analogy’. In Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, edited by Lutz Edzard and Rudolf de Jong. Accessed 28 November 2022. https://refer-enceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-arabic-language-and-linguistics/ analogy-EALL_COM_0014?s.num=0&s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopedia-of-arabic language-and-linguistics&s.q=ratcliffe. ↗
  59. Reckendorf, Hermann. 1921. Arabische Syntax. Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universit ätsbu-chhandlung. find
  60. Ritt-Benmimoun, Veronika. 2014. Grammatik des arabischen Beduinendialekts der Region Douz (Südtunesien). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. find
  61. Ritt-Benmimoun, Veronika. 2017. ‘Agreement with Plural Heads in Tunisian Arabic: The Bedouin South’. In Tunisian and Libyan Arabic Dialects: Common Trends – Recent Developments – Diachronic Aspects, edited by Veronika Ritt-Benmimoun, 261–287. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza. Schmidtke–Bode, Karsten. 2009. A Typology of Purpose Clauses. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. find
  62. Sibony, Jonas. 2022. ‘Phonetical and Phonological Adaptations of Hebrew Loanwords in Moroccan Judeo-Arabic’. Romanica-Arabica 21: 103–124. find
  63. Siewierska, Anna. 1991. Functional Grammar. London and New York: Routledge. find
  64. Singer, Hans-Rudolf. 1984. Grammatik der arabischen Mundart der Medina von Tunis. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. find
  65. Taine-Cheikh, Catherine. 1983. ‘Le passif en ḥassāniyya’. Matériaux arabes et sudarabiques 1: 61–104. find
  66. Talmoudi, Fathi. 1980. The Arabic Dialect of Sūsa (Tunisia). Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. find
  67. Tirosh-Becker, Ofra. 2015. ‘Two Judeo-Arabic Translations of the Scroll of Antiochus from Ghardaïa (Algeria)’. In The Festschrift Darkhei Noam, edited by Carsten Schapkow, Shmuel Shepkaru, and Alan T. Levenson, 185–213. Leiden: Brill. find
  68. Trask, Larry. 1996. Historical Linguistics. London: Arnold. find
  69. Wagner, Esther-Miriam. 2010. Linguistic Variety of Judaeo-Arabic in Letters from the Cairo Genizah. Leiden: Brill. find
  70. Willis, David. 2017. ‘Endogenous and Exogenous Theories of Syntactic Change’. In The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax’, edited by Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts, 70–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. find
  71. Yoda, Sumikazu. 2005. The Arabic Dialect of the Jews of Tripoli (Libya): Grammar, Text and Glossary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. find

↑ back to top

This page in Markdown → https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/gebski-2023-between-analogy-language-contact-case/