Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics

Labiovelarization may be described as a rounding of the lips, accompanied by the raising of the back of the tongue; it may be analyzed as a case of secondary combined articulation or of co-articulation. This phenomenon is common to all Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) languages. Cantineau (1960:30) mentions what he calls “l'affrication des labiales b, m, f”, which can be uttered with “un w furtif, ‘spirante de passage’”. This appears mainly before vowels with “une ouverture maxima des lèvres”, whereas the labials need “une fermeture des lèv…

1. Preliminary remarks Etymologically, the term lafḏ̣ is a maṣdar, i.e. a verbal noun. Originally it meant ‘to spit, reject, vomit’ and, in the specific context of speech activities, ‘to emit words, to utter’. In practice, there has been a shift from action to result and hence from a verbal value of the maṣdar to a nominal one. Taken substantively, lafḏ̣ is not to be understood as a singular noun but rather as a collective one. This collective and consequently generic meaning implies a globalizing comprehension of the utterance perceived as a whole, as opposed to the words that mak…

In Medieval Arabic texts laḥn is the key term to refer to linguistic mistakes. According to Fück (1955:205), who studied the term in detail, it is first attested in this sense after the advent of Islam, at the end of the 1st century A.H., but the term itself is older. The common element in all archaic examples is ‘leaning over; deviating’ ( …

1. Academy precursors The first ‘academy’ in the Arab world was established by the French during the Napoleonic occupation of Egypt (1798–1801); it came to an end with the French exit from Egypt in 1801. There were several attempts in the 19th century, especially in Egypt and Lebanon, by enlightened scholars concerned with intellectual issues in general, and language matters in particular, to establish similar organizations. A serious effort was made in 1892/1893 when the first meeting of al-Majmaʿ al-Luġawī al-ʿArabī ‘Arabic Language Academy’ was held at the home of Muḥamm…

see First Language Acquisition ; Second Language Acquisition

1. Introduction …

Social psychologists define ‘attitude’ as “a psychological tendency … expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor” (…

The study of contact situations involving Arabic permits a number of generalizations, most of which are unsurprising. More interesting, therefore, are the sometimes quite striking differences among the contact situations and their linguistic and sociolinguistic outcomes. In this entry, three sets of topics are surveyed, and some of their implications for general theories of contact-induced language change are discussed. Less attention is paid to the historical, political, and socioeconomic setti…

The term ‘language impairment’ covers a wide array of language disorders that affect language abilities, including hearing, speaking, signing, reading, and writing across all levels of language structures and functions as well as processes of language comprehension and production. The field dedicated to the study of language impairments is called language pathology.…

1. Introduction …

see Language Shift: Amazigh

Language pathology' (also known as ‘language disorder’ or ‘language impairment’) refers to deficiencies in language use (production or comprehension or both) due to a clear physical cause. Roman Jakobson (1971) was probably the first linguist to stress the insights that can be drawn from pathological deficits in linguistic performance. What he called ‘experiments in nature’, he argued, not only…

1. Introduction …

1. Introduction The term ‘language shift’ refers to the change from the habitual use of one language to that of another. This implies that a community gives up a language in favor of another one. When shift has taken place, members of the community are said to have collectively chosen a new language instead of their native one (Fasold 1984). This is, in fact, a common result of extensi…

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see Variation

1. Introduction Arabic speakers have been part of Latin American society since the mid-17th century, when the Syrian Chaldean priest ʾIlyās al-Mawṣilī came to South America on a papal mission. The ties between Iberian and Arab culture date even further back, to the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors, an event that left an indelibl…

Latin loanwords entered the Arabic language during the seven centuries or so which elapsed between the Roman conquest of Bilād aš-Šām in 63 B.C.E. and its subsequent conquest by the Arabs in the 630s C.E. The area extended from the Euphrates River or the Amanus Mountains in the north to the Sinai Peninsula in the south. Roman rule in this area was preceded …

Arabic is the language of Lebanon, spoken and official. This said, the linguistic landscape of Lebanon, historical and contemporary, presents the observer with a varied and changing picture. The region that today comprises the State of Lebanon has seen at least two language shifts. Records show that at any point in time the inhabitants of the region used several languages simultaneously, for different purposes. Geographically, Lebanon covers a rather small, mostly mountainous area (10,452 km2). The population is highly mobile, urbanized and relatively well educated. Regional variations, though they exist, are not as significant as can be attested in larger geographical areas. The variations that exist are partly regional, but mainly social. Lebanese Arabic got some attention at the beginning of the twentieth century, with studies by, among others, Feghali (1919) on the dialect of Kfar ʿAbida, Nakhla (1937) on Syro-Lebanese, and Hajjé (1954) on the dialect of Tripoli. Frayha publish…

1. Definition …