New Data on the Delateralization of Dad and its merger with Za' in Classical Arabic: Contributions from Old South Arabic and the Earliest Islamic Texts on D / Z Minimal Pairs

Abstract

The history of the phoneme ḍād and its merger with the phoneme ẓā’ has proven enigmatic. By presenting data from Old South Arabian speech communities and lexical data from the Islamic tradition, this article brackets a period of ḍād / ẓā’ free variation between the fourth and mid-eighth centuries ce. These data support the theory that the pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabic speech community was divided into two segments in respect to the ḍād / ẓā’ relationship: a group that pronounced both separately and produced the lettered tradition of the Qur’ān, and some that did not distinguish between the two phonemes. This article presents data from the earliest Arabic texts on ḍād / ẓā’ minimal pairs, those of Abu ‘Umar al-Zāhid (d. 345/957) and al-Ṣāḥib Ismā‘īl Ibn ‘Abbād (d. 385/995). These texts also provide glimpses into how the Islamic lexical tradition explained the historical link between the two phonemes.