Abstract
This chapter was designed to promote our understanding of the triangulation, in Arabic, of language, orthography and reading. We focus on topics in the structure of the Arabic language and orthography that pertain to literacy research and practice. It is agreed that the development of basic reading skills is influenced by linguistic (mainly phonological and morpho-syntactic) and orthographic variation among languages. Therefore, the chapter devotes particular attention to these aspects of the linguistic structure of Arabic and to the way this structure is represented in the Arabic orthography. Further, in light of the importance of oral language processing skills in the acquisition of reading, the chapter also discusses Arabic diglossia: it describes the linguistic distance between Colloquial or Spoken Arabic and Standard or Literary Arabic, the primacy of Standard Arabic linguistic structures in the written form of the language, and the effect of this on several linguistic processes in literacy acquisition.
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- 1.
These terms have historically referred to different language varieties—Classical Arabic referred to the language of pre-Islamic poets; Literary Arabic referred to the prose language of medieval Islam, while (Modern) Standard Arabic refers to the modern use of this language, a descendant of the former two older forms (Bateson 2003, p. 75). The distinction, however, is not strictly adhered to.
- 2.
Writing in some of the colloquial prestige dialects has been noted since the fifteenth century, but most prominently since the nineteenth century in the Cairene dialect for several genres of literary prose, poetry, and drama. This ‘culture of the colloquial’ has been challenged and evoked some opposition and debate in Egypt (Davies 2006).
- 3.
Historically, Colloquial Arabic is argued by scholars to have descended from “some form of inter-tribal speech in use during the period of the [Islamic] conquests containing a greater or lesser admixture of ClA [Classical Arabic], and owe their variations to the indigenous influences” (Bateson 2003, p. 94). The popular belief that Colloquial Arabic is a direct deterioration of Classical Arabic, believed to have been the spoken language of the pre-Islamic era until spoiled by foreign substrata in the newly conquered territories, has been refuted in the light of evidence that Classical Arabic was never generally spoken (ibid).
- 4.
- 5.
In many modern dialects, including Negev Arabic, ḍ and ð ˌ have merged and are pronounced as an interdental emphatic, like the historical/ðˌ/.
- 6.
But Al-Ani (2008, p. 600) claims the opposite: “The progressive spreading is the most common, whereas regressive spreading is very rare”.
- 7.
- 8.
Holes (2004, p. 99) precludes homorganic non-identical root radicals in general. Exceptions include the sonorants, which can co-occur with any other consonant in any position.
- 9.
A mora is a prosodic weight unit for classifying syllable structure. It counts all units excluding the onset consonant.
- 10.
Holes (2004, p. 62 ff.) considers bimoraic syllables ‘light’ too; ‘heavy’ syllables in this system contain 3–4 moras. Al-Ani (2008, p. 601) similarly considers CVC a light syllable. A little further on in the article, however, Al-Ani (2008, p. 602) posits an in-between category of ‘medium’ or bimoraic syllables, such as kam ‘how many’ and ma: ‘what’.
- 11.
Holes ibid presents rare cases where phonemic status may be attributed to stress. This is due to neutralization of word final gemination, which results in minimal pairs such as dialectal sAkat ‘he was silent’ vs. sakAt + t =>sakAt. ‘I was/you were silent’. But he notes that such cases are “marginal and artificial”.
- 12.
More elaborate stress rules (Holes 2004, p. 62 ff.) account for cases like yas. ta .mi.ʕu ‘he listens’, muš.ki .la .tu.ka ‘your problem’ and, particularly, when all the non-final syllables are light, e.g., ma.li.ka.tu.hu ‘his queen’. In this case there is no general agreement as to whether the stress fell on the first syllable in Classical Arabic ma .li.ka.tu.hu (Kager 2009, p. 349), or was limited to the last three syllables (Broselow 2008, p. 613), namely ma.li. ka .tu.hu, the Arab grammarians having totally ignored the issue of stress in their writings.
- 13.
In the following two sections we discuss mainly Modern Standard Arabic. In demonstrating the forms, however, we choose variants that are as close as possible to those of Spoken Arabic. We thus prefer pausal forms that omit final short vowels in the same way as dialectal variants, e.g., katab (and not kataba) ‘to write’, Impf. yaktub (rather than yaktubu), unless the omitted vowels are the issue discussed, or when historical morpho-phonological processes are being shown, e.g., ramaya = > rama: ‘to throw’.
- 14.
Some scholars include hamzated verbs, i.e. verbs containing hamza (see Sect. 1.3: Orthography), in the category of weak verbs (e.g., Voigt 2009, p. 700 ff.).
- 15.
The grammarians set up phonotactic rules according to a scale of relative lightness and strength of the phonemes that corresponds to sonority (Holes 2004, p. 113): vowels are lightest and strongest, consonants heaviest and weakest; within the vowels, the hierarchy is a > i > u. In contact, the lighter-stronger phoneme overrules and only sequences of rising lightness are permitted. So the triphthong iyu in *yarmiyu above will contract to iy = > i:, as also in *qa:ḍiyu = > qa:ḍi: ‘judge’ (Versteegh 2001, p. 86 ff.; Voigt 2009, p. 699). The homogeneous triphthongs *awa,*aya are simplified by elision of the glide, as we saw in *qawala = > qa:la and *ramaya = > rama: above.
- 16.
The numbering of these forms is a western innovation. Arabic terminology knows them just by name (Versteegh 2001, p. 87).
- 17.
The attributive suffix named نِسْبَة nisba ‘relationship, attribution’, is transcribed in the linguistic literature and dictionaries as -i:, -iy, or -iyy. We prefer the latter, reflecting most faithfully the morpho-phonological gemination occurring in MSA and seen in vocalized Arabic orthography. Gemination of this morpheme is absent from many dialects and this affects stress patterns in the spoken varieties.
- 18.
In the Greek and Latin grammatical tradition the term ‘declension’ is exclusive to nouns. As mentioned earlier, however, Arab grammarians see the imperfect verb as مُضارِع mu ḍ a:riʕ ‘similar’ to the participle, and have focused their attention on the parallelism between verbal and nominal endings. They subsume both under the term إعْراب ʔiʕra:b, treated under syntax (نَحْو naħw), rather than morphology (صَرْف~ تَصْريف ṣarf ~taṣri:f), which deals with inflections of person, number, etc. (Versteegh 2001, p. 74). In this tradition “the endings/-u, -a, -0/ of the imperfect verb are case endings” (Versteegh 2001, p. 85). We shall accordingly use the term ‘declension’ for verbal modal endings too, as is common in the writings of modern Arabists (e.g., Larcher 2009, p. 639; Versteegh 2001, pp. 76–79).
- 19.
ʔalif maqṣ u:ra is glossed by Wright (1975 I, p. 11) as the aleph “that can be abbreviated”, in contrast with ʔalif mamdu:da ‘lengthened aleph’, which never shortens. In non-final context the consonantal/y/ may re-appear, e.g بَكَيْتَ bakayta ‘you cried’ and إلَيْكَ ʔ ilayka ‘to you’, respectively. Another variant of the shortened aleph is actually spelled with an aleph in cases such as the verb غَزا Ɣaza: ‘to raid’ from the root ƔZW.
- 20.
The term ħaraka:t refers properly to “the phonemes that are known in the Western tradition as ‘short vowels’…” (Versteegh 2007a, p. 232), but often includes the graphemes too.
- 21.
The madda is less frequently written over an aleph designating a long/a:/ before a hamza, e.g., ja:ʔ ‘he came’ is usually written جاء, properly جآء (Wright 1975 I, p. 24).
- 22.
The introduction of vowel marks into the Arabic orthography was initiated by the medieval grammarian ʔAbu: l-ʔaswad ad-duʔali:, using red dots in different arrangements and positions. This system was changed in the late eighth century by ʔal-fara:hi:di: into a system similar to what we see today. ʔal-fara:hi:di: found the task of writing Arabic tedious when using two different colors, one for letters and another, red, for vocalization. Also, the ʔiʕja:m (consonant dots) had been introduced by then. This meant that without a color distinction the two systems could become confused. As a result, ʔal-fara:hi:di: introduced the use of superscripted letters to mark vocalization, thus distinguishing visually between the two systems, vocalization and consonant diacritics.
- 23.
Terminology varies here, as in other issues. Bassiouney (2009), for example, avoids the term ‘standard’ in the context of dialects, i.e. on the horizontal scale. She devotes a chapter (1.2.1, p. 18 ff.) to the difference between ‘standard’ and ‘prestige’ in the context of dialects, reserving the term ‘standard’ for Standard (i.e. modern Literary) Arabic.
- 24.
Note that the phonetic realization of consonants, as allophonic variants of phonemes, is not graphemically marked. This is salient in the case of widespread phonological assimilation processes, such as velarization spread (see Sect. 1.2.1: Phonology).
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Saiegh-Haddad, E., Henkin-Roitfarb, R. (2014). The Structure of Arabic Language and Orthography. In: Saiegh-Haddad, E., Joshi, R. (eds) Handbook of Arabic Literacy. Literacy Studies, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8545-7_1
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