Arabische Dialektgeographie: Eine Einfuhrung.

Kaye, Alan S.

Arabische Dialektgeographie: Eine Einfuhrung. By PETER BEHNSTEDT and MANFRED WOIDICH. Leiden: BRILL, 2005. Pp. xviii + 269, maps. $133.

This book has long been a desideratum--an encyclopedic reference work on Arabic dialect geography written by two eminently qualified Arabic dialectologists, who have accomplished much field-work in the Arab world over long and distinguished (and far from completed) careers. Although the volume is subtitled "an introduction," it really is much more than that. It is more in the way of a handbook that summarizes the present state of our knowledge in the field of Arabic dialectology. It amalgamates the research efforts of older as well as of more contemporary scholarship. Chapter two, for example, discusses some published works relied upon by the authors. In addition to their own extensive publications, considerable use is made of the pioneering investigations of G. Bergstrasser, J. Cantineau, W. Arnold, O. Jastrow, and R. De Jong, not to mention the project of Behnstedt, Jastrow, and the late R. Talmon on Arabic dialects in northern Israel, and the Atlas linguistique Tunisien of Taieb Baccouche. A perusal of the rich bibliography (pp. 219-37) demonstrates the authors' concern for thoroughness and exacting detail. However, the following errors are evident in this section: many of the capital letters of English prepositions and conjunctions are inappropriate--see, e.g., p. 219; under the listing for Werner Arnold, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam is misspelled (p. 220); the name of the main editor of the Ferguson Festschrift (2 vols.) is Joshua A. Fishman (p. 228); the name of Chaim Rabin's classic book is Ancient West-Arabian (London, 1951) (p. 232); and Judith Rosenhouse's (1998) publication should be listed before her (1995) one (pp. 232-33).

The most valuable pages of this large volume are the wonderful maps, especially those of chapter thirteen, "Wortgeographie." Let me single out just two for commentary: map 97 (p. 205) shows the distribution of the verb "go down" throughout the Arab world: nzl, hdr, hwd, hbt, hwl, wt', dly, hwy, twh, trj, ndr, hwf, qdd, drdh, hny; map 89 (p. 193) lists "nose": 'nf, xsm, nxr, xnfr, xnn, xtm, txm, nngrt, njrg, p/buz. The most widespread root (Spain, Uzbekistan, Chad, Mali, etc.) for the first is, as one might have expected, nzl (= Modern Standard Arabic [MSA]), and for the second: ?nf (Spain, Uzbekistan, Khorasan, Yemen, etc.; = MSA as well). However, it is important to note that except for its survival in a small pocket in Upper Egypt, Egyptian Arabic dialects use the roots xsm (= MSA xasm, "nose; mouth"), nxr (= MSA naxara, "snort"), and the word p/buz (< Persian poz). M. Hinds and E. Badawi note in their Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1986), 112, however, that this refers to the "snout of an animal" and is derogatory when referring to a human's mouth.

Turning to some other excellent isoglosses of Arabic dialects gleaned from this work, in Yemen one must distinguish between the dialects having t-perfects and those with t-perfects (map 7, p. 40). Syria is famous for dialects which distinguish monophthongs from diphthongs (map 8, p. 40). The communal dialects of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey (called here Mesopotamia) are clearly demarcated (p. 44). The ten communal dialects of Djerba and the eleven of Bahrayn are noted with pinpoint accuracy (p. 45). The reflexes of *[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] are mapped out for Syria, with several locations showing the distribution of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] among older speakers, whereas younger speakers have a glottal stop (p. 62). There is a similar map for the Galilee (p. 63) that displays a far more complex situation, whereas the reflexes in Morocco represent a less intricate distribution than the aforementioned (p. 65).

Let me point out that the root variation one observes in a word such as 'cat' is quite understandable, since linguistic borrowing and onomatopoeia enter into the picture (p. 200). Yemen alone shows seven different roots: biss(a); hirr; dimm; nasam; 'rri; and 'usanah ~ husan (ibid.).

It should be noted that although we have solid information for some Arab countries, there is precious little or none for others. The word for "shrimp" may be taken as illustrative of the state of affairs, in that nothing is noted for most of Saudi Arabia and all of Yemen and Oman; yet Yemeni Arabic has jambari (collective) and habbat jambari, "a shrimp," as is recorded in Hamdi A. Qafisheh, NTC 's Yemeni Arabic-English Dictionary (Chicago: NTC, 2000), 84.

Let me take up a grammatical particle, the genitive exponent. Although Egypt is well known for its "of "-particle bita', there are pockets in Middle Egypt in which suyl (known from Palestine) is the genitival exponent (Tell el-'Amarna, Asyut, Suhag, etc.; p. 143). If this were not fascinating enough, Egypt has two others as well: ihnin and allil (p. 18).

Can we learn anything diachronic from these valuable synchronic maps? Sometimes it is easy, or so it seems, to draw historical conclusions about the history of Arab migrations. For example, the word "mouth" is fa in parts of Yemen, Morocco, and Andalusia, but this form is not documented elsewhere (p. 145). This appears to be the accusative singular of Classical Arabic fam-un, "mouth," yet one wonders how the accusative survived or became generalized (statistical frequency of occurrence?). It is likely that the Andalusian fa < Moroccan fa (also faffa, p. 146), yet it is just as likely that the Moroccan form can be traced back to Yemen, and one should also entertain other hypotheses that the Moroccan fa goes back to some intermediary Arabic dialect in Egypt or North Africa--a dialect which no longer exists. Other forms in existence coming from this root include fam (only Saudi Arabia and Andalusia), fum, ufum, famm, fumm, f[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]mm, fomm, [theta]um, [theta]im, timm, [theta]umm, t[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]mm, s[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]mm, i[theta]um, and u[theta]um. Of great importance here is the fact that this root has been replaced by at least half a dozen others. Most linguists are of the opinion that very common body-part terminology (exemplified by "mouth") is less susceptible to lexical replacement than is other vocabulary. The word for "nose" is another excellent example of phenomenal root variation within Arabic (see above), yielding xasim and xass in Libya, e.g., with nyangdratu (< *minqartu, "his beak," demonstrating its pejorative etymon) in Ki-Nubi, and Arabic creole of East Africa (pp. 193-94).

One could go on and on with numerous other examples. The historical ramifications of these Arabic data will, hopefully, occupy investigations by Arabists for many years to come.

In conclusion, this publication is a virtual goldmine for Arabists, Semitists, and general dialectologists. Behnstedt and Woidich are to be congratulated for producing this outstanding compendium that will surely be the standard by which one comes to measure future dialectological works for the Semitic and Afroasiatic languages.

ALAN S. KAYE

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON