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Assessing contact-induced change in Palestinian Arabic: Evidence from Beirut

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2024

Yasmine Abou Taha  and
Stephen Levey
Yasmine Abou Taha
Affiliation:
University of Toronto and University of Ottawa
Stephen Levey*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto and University of Ottawa
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

We investigate whether Palestinian Arabic (PA), as spoken by the local Palestinian refugee population in Beirut, is converging with Lebanese Arabic (LA), the majority variety. Using a sociolinguistic framework, we target three variables considered to be susceptible to convergent change. We find evidence of contact-induced change in PA in the variable raising of word-medial /a:/ to [e:], as well as in the attrition of socially marked exponents of verbal negation. By contrast, in the case of the third variable, the future temporal reference system, the evidence for convergence is less compelling on account of key differences between the contact varieties, including the vertiginous rise of the proclitic future marker ħa- in PA. We implicate the respective social salience of the targeted variables in their differential susceptibility to convergence. Our results afford new insights into dialect contact and elucidate under-studied patterns of grammatical variation and change in Levantine Arabic.

Résumé

Résumé

Nous cherchons à savoir si l'arabe palestinien (AP), tel que parlé par la population locale de réfugiés palestiniens à Beyrouth, est en train de converger avec l'arabe libanais (AL), la variété majoritaire. En employant une méthodologie sociolinguistique, nous ciblons trois variables considérées comme étant propices à la convergence linguistique. Les preuves du changement causé par le contact en AP se dégagent de l'analyse de la voyelle /a:/ qui s’élève de manière variable en [e:] à l'intérieur d'un mot, ainsi que de la réduction des expressions de la négation verbale dotées d'une évaluation sociale négative. Par contre, en ce qui concerne la troisième variable étudiée, la référence temporelle au futur, les preuves en faveur de la convergence linguistique sont moins convaincantes en raison des différences essentielles affichées par les variétés en contact, telles que l'augmentation spectaculaire du proclitique ħa- comme indicateur du futur en AP. Nous proposons que la susceptibilité différentielle des variables cibles à la convergence linguistique est étroitement liée à leur évaluation sur le plan social. Nos résultats offrent de nouvelles perspectives sur le contact entre dialectes en mettant en lumière des schémas de variation et de changement grammaticaux sous-étudiés en arabe levantin.

Keywords

dialect contactcomparative sociolinguisticsArabiccontact entre dialectessociolinguistique comparativel'arabe
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , June 2024 , pp. 203 - 234
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Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2024

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