Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T09:43:18.826Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Regional dialect leveling in Najdi Arabic: The case of the deaffrication of [k] in the Qaṣīmī dialect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2013

Yousef al-Rojaie*
Affiliation:
Qassim University

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of linguistic and social factors (age, gender, and level of education) on the patterns of variation in the affrication of [] for [k] in the stem and suffix in the informal speech of 72 speakers of Qaṣīmī, a local dialect of Najdi Arabic, spoken in the Qaṣīm province in central Saudi Arabia. Findings indicate that affrication is significantly favored in the phonological context of front vowels, particularly the high front ones. Whereas suffix-based affrication is categorically used as [-], stem affrication is strongly correlated with the age, educational level, and gender of the speaker. In particular, older uneducated speakers from both sexes tend to maintain the use of the local variant [], whereas younger and middle-aged educated speakers, particularly women, increasingly shift toward the use of the supralocal variant [k]. The present findings are suggestive of patterns of variation that are typical in regional-dialect leveling, wherein the supralocal variant(s) associated with the major city dialect is (are) diffusing outward, at the expense of traditional and socially marked variant(s), by speakers of smaller towns' dialects. The substantial socioeconomic changes that Saudi Arabia has undergone in the last half century are suggested to have triggered and accelerated the linguistic shift.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abboud, Peter. (1964). The syntax of Najdi Arabic. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.Google Scholar
Abboud, Peter. (1979). The verb in northern Najdi Arabic. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 42:467499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abboud, Peter. (1987). The vowel of the imperfect in Najdi Arabic. In Jazayery, M., Polome, E., and Winter, W. (eds.), Linguistic and literary studies in honor of Archibald A. Hill. The Hague: Mouton. 129138.Google Scholar
Abd-el-Jawad, Hassan. (1981). Lexical and phonological variation in spoken Arabic in Amman. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Abd-el-Jawad, Hassan. (1986). The emergence of an urban dialect in the Jordanian urban centres. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 61:5363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abd-el-Jawad, Hassan. (1987). Cross-dialectal variation in Arabic: Competing prestigious forms. Language in Society 16:359368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abu-Haider, Farida. (1989). Are Iraqi women more prestige conscious than men? Sex differentiation in Baghdadi Arabic. Language in Society 18:471481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abu-Haider, Farida. (1991). Christian Arabic of Baghdad. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Al-Abdul-Munaiem, Abdul-Munaiem, Al-Sudani, Abdulaziz., Al-Jabr, Nabeh., & Al-Mugbl, Waleed.. (2002). Souq al-Amal al-Mahli. Buraydah: Qassim Chamber of Commerce and Industry.Google Scholar
Al-Ahdal, Hassan. (1989). A sociostylistic description of speech in Makkah. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Reading.Google Scholar
Al-Azraqi, Munira. (2007). The use of Kaškašah/Kaskasah and alternative means among educated urban Saudi speakers. In Miller, C., Al-Wer, E., Caubet, D., & Watson, J. C. E. (eds.), Arabic in the city: Issues in dialect contact and language variation. London: Routledge. 230245.Google Scholar
Al-Essa, Aziza. (2009). When Najd meets Hijaz: Dialect contact in Jeddah. In Al-Wer, E. & de Jong, R. (eds.), Arabic dialectology, Leiden: Brill. 203223.Google Scholar
Al-Jehani, Nasir. (1985). Sociostylistic stratification of Arabic in Makkah. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Al-Jehani, Nasir. (1994). Mecca: Sociocultural change and elaborate courtesy in the speech of females. Journal of King Saud University (Arts) 6:5364.Google Scholar
Al-Khatib, Mahmoud. (1988). Sociolinguistic change in an expanding urban context: A case study of Irbid City. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Durham.Google Scholar
Al-Shehri, Abdullah. (1993). Urbaniation and linguistic variation and change: A sociolinguistic study of the impact of urbanisation on the linguistic behaviour or urbanised rural immigrants in Hijaz, Saudi Arabia. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Essex, Colchester.Google Scholar
Al-Sweel, Abdulaziz. (1987). Verbal and nominal forms of Najdi Arabic. Anthropological Linguistics 29:7190.Google Scholar
Al-Sweel, Abdulaziz. (1990). Some aspects of Najdi Arabic phonology. ZAL 21:7182.Google Scholar
Al-Wer, Eman. (1997). Arabic between reality and ideology. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 7:251265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Al-Wer, Eman. (2002). Education as a speaker variable. In Rouchdy, A. (ed.), Language contact and language conflict in Arabic. New York: Routledge. 4152.Google Scholar
‘Anīs, Ibrahim. (1992). Fi al-Lahjat al-Arabyya. Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjlo al-Massriah.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy. (2002). Real and apparent time. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P., & Schilling-Estes, N. (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. Malden: Blackwell. 312332.Google Scholar
Barry, Randall. (1997). ALA-LC romanization tables: Transliteration schemes for non-Roman scripts. Washington, DC: Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service.Google Scholar
Britain, David. (2002). Space and spatial diffusion. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P., & Schilling-Estes, N. (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. Malden: Blackwell. 603637.Google Scholar
Britain, David. (2005). Innovation diffusion: “Estuary English” and local dialect differentiation: The survival of Fenland Englishes. Linguistics 43:9951022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cantineau, Jean. (1936/1937). Etudes sur quelques parlers de nomads arabes d'Orient. Annals de la Faculte’ d'Etudes, Universite' d'Alger II(1936):1188; III(1937):119–217.Google Scholar
Central Department of Statistics and Information (Saudi Arabia). (1974). Saudi Arabia population and housing census 1974. Riyadh: Central Department of Statistics and Information.Google Scholar
Central Department of Statistics and Information (Saudi Arabia). (2004). Saudi Arabia population and housing census 2004. Riyadh: Central Department of Statistics and Information.Google Scholar
Daher, Jamil. (1999). Gender in linguistic variation: The variable (q) in Damascus. In Benmamoun, E., Eid, M., & Haeri, N. (eds.), Perspectives on Arabic linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 183206.Google Scholar
Feagin, Crawford. (2002). Entering the community: Fieldwork. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P., & Schilling-Estes, N. (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. Malden: Blackwell. 2039.Google Scholar
Haeri, Niloofar. (1991). Sociolinguistic variation in Cairene Arabic: Palatalization and the qaf in the speech of men and women. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Haeri, Niloofar. (1994). A linguistic innovation of women in Cairo. Language Variation and Change 6:87112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haeri, Niloofar. (1997). The sociolinguistic market of Cairo: Gender, class and education. London: Kegan Paul International.Google Scholar
Holes, Clive. (1983). Patterns of communal language variation in Bahrain. Language in Society 12:433457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holes, Clive. (1986). The social motivation for phonological convergence in three Arabic dialects. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 61:3351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holes, Clive. (1987). Language variation and change in a modernising Arab state: The case of Bahrain. London: Kegan Paul International.Google Scholar
Holes, Clive. (1991). Kashkasha and the fronting and affrication of the velar stops revisited: A contribution to the historical phonology of the peninsular Arabic dialects. Semitic Studies 1:652678.Google Scholar
Holes, Clive. (1995). Community, dialect and urbanization in the Arabic-speaking Middle East. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 58:270287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingham, Bruce. (1982). North east Arabian dialects. London: Kegan Paul International.Google Scholar
Ingham, Bruce. (1994). Najdi Arabic: Central Arabian. London Oriental and African Language Library, I. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jabeur, Muhammad. (1987). A sociolinguistic study in Tunisia: Rades. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Reading.Google Scholar
Jassem, Zaidan. (1987). Phonological variation and change in immigrant speech: A sociolinguistic study of a 1967 Arab-Israeli war immigrant speech community in Damascus, Syria. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Durham.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Thomas Muir. (1963). The affrication of kaf and gaf in the Arabic dialects of the Arabian Peninsula. Journal of the Semitic Studies 8:210226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Thomas Muir. (1967). Aspects of syllabication in the spoken Arabic of ‘Anaiza’. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 40:116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahtani, Ali Saad. (1993). The impact of social change on linguistic behaviour: Phonological variation in spoken Arabic, Asir, Saudi Arabia. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Essex, Colchester.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. (2003). Dialect leveling and geographical diffusion in British English. In Britain, D. & Cheshire, J. (eds.), Social dialectology: In honour of Peter Trudgill. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 223243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kojak, Wafa. (1983). Language and sex: A case study of a group of educated Syrian speakers of Arabic. M.A. thesis, University of Lancaster.Google Scholar
Lehn, Walter. (1967). Vowel contrasts in Najdi Arabic. In Stuart, D. G. (ed.), Linguistic studies in memory of Richard Slade Harrell. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 123131.Google Scholar
Miller, Catherine. (2003). Variation and change in Arabic urban vernacular. In Haack, M., De Jong, R., & Versteegh, K. (eds.), Approaches to Arabic dialects: Collection of articles presented to Manfred Woidich on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Amsterdam: Brill. 177206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Catherine. (2005). Between accommodation and resistance: Upper Egyptian migrants in Cairo. Language 43:903956.Google Scholar
Miller, Catherine. (2007). Arabic urban vernaculars: Development and change. In Miller, C., Al-Wer, E., Caubet, D., & Watson, J. C. E. (eds.), Arabic in the city: Issues in dialect contact and language variation. London: Routledge. 131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milroy, Lesley, & Gordon, Matthew. (2003). Sociolinguistic: Method and interpretation. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prochazka, Theodore. (1988). Saudi Arabian dialects. London: Kegan Paul International.Google Scholar
Salaam, Yasmine. (2000). American-educated Saudi technocrats: Agents of social change? Ph.D. dissertation. Tufts University, Medford.Google Scholar
Sallam, Ahmad. (1980). Phonological variation in educated spoken Arabic: A study of the uvular and related plosive types. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43:77100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, David, Tagliamonte, Sali, & Smith, Eric. (2005). Goldvarb X: A variable rule application for Macintosh and Windows. Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Richard. (1974). Sociolinguistic variation in spoken Arabic in Egypt: Re-examination of the concept of diglossia. Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, Providence.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Richard. (1986). Applied sociolinguistics: The case of Arabic as a second language. Anthropological Linguistics 28:5572.Google Scholar
Torgersen, Eivid, & Kerswill, Paul. (2004). Internal and external motivation in phonetic change: Dialect leveling outcomes for an English vowel shift. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8:2353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1974). Linguistic change and diffusion: Description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society 2:215246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1983). Linguistic change and diffusion. In Trudgill, P. (ed.) On dialect. Oxford: Blackwell. 5287.Google Scholar
Watson, Janet. (1992). Kaškaša with reference to modern Yemeni dialects. Zeitschrift Fur Arabische Linguistik 24:6081.Google Scholar
Williams, Ann, & Kerswill, Paul. (1999). Dialect leveling: Change and continuity in Milton Keynes, Reading and Hull. In Foulkes, P. & Docherty, G. (eds.), Urban voices: Accent studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. 141162.Google Scholar