Declaration Copyright Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 1.1 Aim and scope of this study 1.2 Geography 1.3 History: political and socioeconomic 1.4 Linguistic diversity in Dhofār 1.5 Literature review 1.5.1 Rhodokanakis and the Süd-Arabische Expeditions of the Austrian Imperial Academy 1.5.2 Arabic dialects 1.6 Methodology 1.7 Conclusion and recommendations for further study. 2 Phonology 2.1 Consonant inventory 2.1.1 Stops 2.1.2 Fricatives 2.1.3 Nasals 2.1.4 Laterals 2.1.5 Flaps 2.1.6 Glides 2.1.7 Marginal phonemes 2.1.8 Geographical variations of voiced velar plosive /g/, and voiced uvular plosive /q/ within Dhofār 2.2 Vowel inventory 2.2.1 Imāla-vowel fronting and raising 2.3 Short vowels 2.3.1 Short vowel /i/ 2.3.2 Short vowel /u/ 2.3.3 Short vowel /a/ 2.4 Long vowels 2.4.1 Long vowel /ī/ 2.4.2 Long vowel /ū/ 2.4.3 Long vowel /ē/ 2.4.4 Long vowel /ō/ 2.4.5 Long vowel /ā/ 2.5 Diphthongs 2.6 Imāla in loanwords, and MSA influence on CDA 2.7 Syllabification and consonant clusters 2.7.1 CvCC forms 2.7.2 CCC clusters 2.8 Assimilation 2.9 Stress 2.10 Vowel harmony 2.11 Concluding remarks 3 Nominal morphology and noun phrases 3.1 Nouns and noun derivation 3.1.1 Basic derived forms 3.