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NAJDI ARABIC LONDON ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN LANGUAGE LIBRARY Editors Theodora Bynon School of Oriental and African Studies London Masayoshi Shibatani Kobe University Advisory Board James Bynon, Bernard Comrie, Judith Jacob, Gilbert Lazard, Christian Lehmann, James A. Matisoff, Vladimir P. Nedjalkov, Robert H. Robins, Christopher Shackle The LONDON ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN LANGUAGE LIBRARY aims to make available a series of reliable and up-to-date descriptions of the grammatical structure of a wide range of Oriental and African languages, in a form readily accessible to the non- specialist. With this in mind, the language material in each volume will be in roman script, fully glossed and translated. The Library is based at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, Europe's largest institution specializing in the study of languages and cultures of Africa and Asia. Each volume is written by an acknowledged expert in the field who has carried out original research on the language and has first-hand knowledge of the area in which it is spoken. Volume 1 Bruce Ingham Najdi Arabic NAJDI ARABIC CENTRAL ARABIAN BRUCE INGHAM University of London JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ingham, Bruce. Najdi Arabic : central Arabian / Bruce Ingham. p. cm. - (London Oriental and African language library ; v. 1) Includes bibliographical references (p. ). 1. Arabic language--Dialects--Saudi Arabia--Najd--Grammar. I. Title. II. Series. PJ6850.N35I54 1994 492\.77--dc20 94-34957 ISBN 90 272 3801 4 (Eur.) / 1-55619-725-X (US) (alk. paper) CIP © Copyright 1994 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia, PA 19118 • USA To Shokooh Banou Contents PREFACE xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xv MAP - Najd and Surrounding Areas xvü 1. NAJD AND THE NAJDI DIALECTS 1 History and topography of the Arabian peninsula and the origin of 'Arab' culture Archaic nature of the dialects 5 Definition of the corpus 7 Neighbouring dialects to those of Najd 8 Sources on the Najdi dialects 9 Apologia 11 2. PHONOLOGY 13 Inventory 13 The function and distribution of vowels within the word: Anaptyxis. Relationship of short vowels to syllable structure. Influence of the gutturals. Elision of short high vowels in a sequence of open syllables. 16 3. MORPHOLOGY 21 Relationship of the root to meaning. Word classes. Stem types. Verbal morphology 22 The internal passive 26 Stem vowel incidence 28 Object pronoun suffixes 30 Nominal morphology 31 viii NAJDI ARABIC 4. SENTENCE STRUCTURE 35 Uninodal and binodal types. Traditional Arab classification. Focus fronting Uninodal 39 Binodal (Topic-comment structure) 42 Negation 44 5. THE NOUN PHRASE STRUCTURE 47 Heads and modifiers. The indefinite -in Apposition 50 The construct 53 Particles and bound elements involved in the NP 55 The transposed NP structure 59 Attributive constructs 60 6. NUMBER AND GENDER 61 Variation in concord systems between dialects. The relevance of animacy Gender in the noun 62 Concord 62 7. THE VERB TRANSITIVITY SYSTEM 69 Modification of the number and nature of the arguments of the verb. Intensiveness. Morphology 72 Interrelationship of the Aktionsart and Measure systems 73 Reciprocity 81 Repetitive and gradual actions 83 Physical and mental attitude verbs 84 Judgemental verbs 85 Petal verbs 86 8. TENSE, ASPECT AND AKTIONSART 87 Primacy of Aspect in Najdi and Classical. Previous treatments Aktionsart divisions of verbs 89 The Tense/aspect system 94 Time reference of the verbal forms 96 Uses of the particle gid/ gid 104 Relative time preverbal markers 107 Non-Arabian dialect influences 109 The häl clause 109 CONTENTS ix 9. MODALITY IN THE SENTENCE 117 Nature of the modal elements, epistemic and deontic modality The modal elements 119 10. TIME AND CONDITION STRUCTURES 131 Relationship between the two Conditional clauses 134 Time clauses 142 Conclusions 147 11. TEXTS 149 Introduction to the texts 1. Abu Ma mūd and his family at the funfair 149 2. Abu Hājūs's business venture 161 APPENDICES 173 Appendix 1. Lexicon of Najdi items 173 General lexicon 173 Expressions involving the name of God allah 186 Unusual expressions heard among the hafīr 187 Greetings heard among the Ä1 Murrah 189 Words connected with travelling 190 Common idiomatic expressions 191 Appendix 2. Local dialect differences 193 FOOTNOTES 197 REFERENCES 207 INDEX 211