Clik here to view.
The Reconfiguration of the Urban Arabic verb: Fact or Fiction?
Anyone familiar with Classical Arabic and a modern dialect like Cairene or Damascene Arabic will instantly notice that the verbal system behaves a little different from what one might be used to. Verbs...
View ArticleOverflowing and Transgression: The foreign Idols of the Quran
It seems by now an unchallenged fact that ṭāġūt'Idol' is a loanword from Classical Ethiopic ṭāʕōt 'id'. This word itself must certainly be a loanword from Aramaic ṭāʕū, ṭāʕūṯā'error, idol', an abstract...
View ArticleAbū ʕamr's prophets -- a dialectal feature?
One of the seven canonical readers as established by Ibn Mujāhid was Abū ʕamr, the reciter of Basra. His reading tradition is probably the most unusual one among the seven, lacking the hamzah in more...
View ArticleSome thoughts on "Poetic Arabic"
I've arrived at a stage in my research where I need to kind of figure how how I think about the "Poetic Koine"-theory of Arabic. As I am not quite sure what my stance is yet, I decided to just throw...
View ArticlePoetic Arabic and Dialects
One of the reasons why Poetic Arabic is often viewed as a supertribal poetic register, is the fact that the language seems to be 'the same' across different poets. In my IQSA blogpost I already...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The odd connected ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, ẓ and k of the Palermo Quran and Arabe 329f
Recently, while examining Déroche's catalogue of Quranic manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, I ran into an extremely unusual Quran fragment consisting of three folios, that goes by the...
View Articleẓalla 'to remain' in the Quranic Consonantal Text
In Classical Arabic, the behavior of geminate verbs, that is verbs whose second and third root consonant is the same, is a little different from other verbs. Whenever a CVCV sequence occurs where both...
View ArticleOverflowing and Transgression: The foreign Idols of the Quran
It seems by now an unchallenged fact that ṭāġūt'Idol' is a loanword from Classical Ethiopic ṭāʕōt 'id'. This word itself must certainly be a loanword from Aramaic ṭāʕū, ṭāʕūṯā'error, idol', an abstract...
View ArticleAbū ʕamr's prophets -- a dialectal feature?
One of the seven canonical readers as established by Ibn Mujāhid was Abū ʕamr, the reciter of Basra. His reading tradition is probably the most unusual one among the seven, lacking the hamzah in more...
View ArticleSome thoughts on "Poetic Arabic"
I've arrived at a stage in my research where I need to kind of figure how how I think about the "Poetic Koine"-theory of Arabic. As I am not quite sure what my stance is yet, I decided to just throw...
View ArticlePoetic Arabic and Dialects
One of the reasons why Poetic Arabic is often viewed as a supertribal poetic register, is the fact that the language seems to be 'the same' across different poets. In my IQSA blogpost I already...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The odd connected ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, ẓ and k of the Palermo Quran and Arabe 329f
Recently, while examining Déroche's catalogue of Quranic manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, I ran into an extremely unusual Quran fragment consisting of three folios, that goes by the...
View Articleẓalla 'to remain' in the Quranic Consonantal Text
In Classical Arabic, the behavior of geminate verbs, that is verbs whose second and third root consonant is the same, is a little different from other verbs. Whenever a CVCV sequence occurs where both...
View ArticleSome linguistics observations while in Japan: Sino-Japanese
For the past 17 days I had a fantastic holiday in Japan, going from Tōkyō (+Nikkō), Takayama, Shirakawago, Kanazawa, Naoshima, Hiroshima, Kōya-san to Kyōto (+Nara). It was a fantastic trip, and a long...
View ArticleSome linguistics observations while in Japan: Kansai origins of formal Japanese
Something I became more aware of than before is that most of the humble as well as honorific verb forms that we find in modern Japanese, along with several fixed expressions come off as completely...
View ArticleOnbin sound changes in Japanese
One of the main developments from Old Japanese to Middle Japanese is the reduction of several Ci/Cu syllables. Where old Japanese only had Cv syllables, Middle Japanese suddenly developed CvC, Cvv and...
View ArticleSome more thoughts on the onbin changes
Seems like I'm not quite done with the onbin sound changes yet. As I learn more about it, I start to have more sympathy for the approach that Frellesvig took. Rather than going in detail trying to...
View ArticleAnachronism and the ʿArabiyyah
A popular ḥadīṯ, frequently cited especially in lexicographical works when discussing the word nabiyy “prophet” or the meaning of nabr “to apply the hamzah”, is I believe first attested in al-Ḫalīl b....
View ArticleThe at-tābūt spelling controversy: A historical linguistic perspective
In the narrations that relate the establishment of the standard text of Uthman, usually an episode is mentioned where disagreement develops on the spelling of التابوت ‘chest, ark’. The version as...
View ArticleThe Quranic Reading Traditions and Case
Probably my most controversial idea concerning the grammar of Quranic Arabic, is that I think there is a good case to be made that Quranic Arabic had a greatly reduce case system, not having tanwīn...
View Article