Structural Change in Urban Palestinian Arabic Induced by Contact with Modern Hebrew

Horesh, Uri

doi:10.1163/9789004300156_012

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(11 reference statements)

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“…A major question for future research is whether what appears to be simultaneous patterns of lowering and backing of the feminine gender marker occurs alongside numerous other changes taking place in the dialect. Other sociolinguistic work in Gaza City (Cotter 2016, Cotter andHoresh 2015) has identified at least one other feature, the voiceless uvular stop /q/, with variable realizations that have been stratified along sociolinguistic lines. Additional research could uncover other areas of sociolinguistic interest that may suggest numerous changes taking place simultaneously as a result of the profound degrees of dialect contact happening in Gaza City.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A sociophonetic account of morphophonemic variation in Palestinian Arabic

Cotter

2016

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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This study presents findings from sociolinguistic fieldwork on Palestinian Arabic conducted in the Gaza Strip. The sample includes 15 speakers who are indigenous residents of Gaza City, representing three age groups and both genders. Linear mixed effects analyses are presented on the vowel raising of the Arabic feminine gender marker; a word final vocalic morpheme. The traditional dialect of Gaza City is reported to realize this morpheme consistently as [a] (Bergsträßer 1915), with all other Levantine city dialects raising the feminine ending to [ɛ, e] or [i] except after back consonants (Al-Wer 2007). Results indicate robust sociophonetic variation in the realization of this vowel across age generations. In comparison to the elderly generation in the sample, younger speakers realize this vowel significantly lower and backer in their casual speech. These results reflect what appears to be a change in progress happening across generations in the traditional dialect of Gaza City as a result of dialect contact happening in the Gaza Strip between speakers of difference varieties of Palestinian Arabic.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A sociophonetic account of morphophonemic variation in Palestinian Arabic

Cotter

2016

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…For the sample of Palestinian speakers reported by Horesh (), the non‐pharyngeal forms were overall more common (61%). However, unlike Hebrew, in which (ʕ) is generally deleted, in PA full deletion was not the most preferred non‐pharyngeal form (20%), and all speakers did use [ʕ] to some extent.…”

Section: Social and Linguistic Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Unlike /ħ/, (ʕ) in PA is a variable. Horesh () identified five different variants of (ʕ): pharyngeal ([baʕdeːn] “later”), glottal ([baʔdeːn]), compensatory lengthening ([baːdeːn]), syllabic vocalization ([ba.a.deːn]) and full deletion ([ba∅den]).…”

Section: Social and Linguistic Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among speakers from Jaffa, medium of education was found to be a significant predictor of the lenition and deletion of Arabic (ʕ) (Horesh, , ); speakers who had an Arabic‐medium educational background were shown to favor pharyngeal realizations of this variable, while speakers with at least some educational background in Hebrew‐medium schools favored lenited or deleted variants. As this shows that social factors correlate with (ʕ), it is likely a socially meaningful variable in the community.…”

Section: Social and Linguistic Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The phonemic inventory of PA also includes /ħ/ and /ʕ/. Unlike Hebrew, however, these phonemes show no sign of a merger with non‐pharyngeals; speakers of PA do realize (ħ) and (ʕ) as pharyngeal, although the latter is often lenited (Horesh, ). Henkin () argues that a frequent feature of L2 Hebrew among native speakers of PA is a pharyngeal realization of (ħ) and (ʕ) in Hebrew, seen as transfer from their native PA phonology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Two languages, one variable? Pharyngeal realizations among Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals

Gafter

Horesh

2019

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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Linguistic features that index ethnic identities often originate in another language spoken by the same community, often involving the introduction of exogenous features absent from the mainstream variety. We examine the more unusual situation of Hebrew spoken by Arabic–Hebrew bilingual Palestinians, where the pharyngeal consonants, which occur in both Arabic and Hebrew monolingual varieties, serve as ethnically linked sociolinguistic variables. Drawing on sociolinguistic interviews with such bilinguals in Jaffa, we demonstrate that while Palestinians’ use of pharyngeals in Hebrew is commonly perceived as transfer from Arabic, their linguistic and social conditioning does not support a transfer account. Rather, for these speakers, pharyngeals are a socially meaningful resource simultaneously linked to Arab identity and to a rich indexical field in Hebrew. While the pharyngeals pattern linguistically as Hebrew features, our findings illustrate that, from a social meaning perspective, sociolinguistic features need not be unambiguously associated with a single language.

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Probing linguistic change in Arabic vernaculars: A sociohistorical perspective

et al. 2020

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It is received wisdom in variationist sociolinguistics that linguistic and social factors go hand in hand in structuring variability in language and any consequent instances of language change. We address the complexity of such factors by exploring data from several Arabic dialects in the eastern Arab world. We demonstrate that language change does not always follow expected phonological trajectories, even in cases where older changes are reconstructed to have operated along so-called universal patterns. In our explanation of recent changes in these dialects, we emphasise the role of social motivations for language change and the interactions between these social constraints and purely linguistic ones. Our analysis of change is supported by historical accounts of variation and change in Arabic. We illustrate how general principles of sociolinguistic theory apply to the Arabic data and provide additional layers of sociolinguistic information that highlight the importance of diverse data for evaluating cross-linguistic generalisations. (Arabic, language change, historical sociolinguistics)

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Structural Change in Urban Palestinian Arabic Induced by Contact with Modern Hebrew

Cited by 12 publications

References 10 publications

A sociophonetic account of morphophonemic variation in Palestinian Arabic

A sociophonetic account of morphophonemic variation in Palestinian Arabic

Two languages, one variable? Pharyngeal realizations among Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals

Probing linguistic change in Arabic vernaculars: A sociohistorical perspective

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