A New Perspective on the History of Arabic Variation in Marking Agreement with Plural Heads

Abstract

This paper examines variation in marking agreement in Arabic. In particular, the investigation focuses on the variation between plural and feminine singular agreement with plural head nouns. Tape-recorded naturalistic speech from sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Cairo constitute the data for the study of agreement in New Arabic. These results are compared to agreement patterns found in a corpus of Old Arabic texts. Some have suggested that the agreement variation found in New and Old Arabic varieties is random and meaningless. However, multivariate analysis of the Cairene and the Old Arabic patterns indicate both are systematic and that the two are similar in many respects. The agreement patterns in question appear to be a resource which speakers exploit to classify referents. It is generally agreed that the language contact situation resulting from the spread of Islam had a profound effect on the development of vernacular varieties of Arabic. Some have argued that the process of language shift to Arabic was rapid, resulting in deep-reaching changes in spoken varieties of Arabic. On the other hand, the formal variety of Arabic that came to be Classical Arabic is touted as having changed little. This study suggests that Classical Arabic, too, appears to be the result of some contact induced change and that the agreement system of Cairene is, in some ways, closer to that of early Old Arabic than is that of its standardized cousin, Modern Standard Arabic. From the standpoint of agreement, it would appear that varieties such as Cairene have changed less and that Classical Arabic changed more than one might suppose. These findings suggest that a re-examination of the history of Arabic is in order