Abstract

Este artículo pretende señalar algunos cambios lingüísticos observados en el árabe de Damasco y su tendencia a la estandarización, al mismo tiempo que presenta material actualizado de dicha variedad. La mayor parte de los estudios centrados en el árabe de Damasco han sido escritos hace varias décadas, por lo que no reflejan los cambios y tendencias del lenguaje producido en el contexto social actual.
 El estudio analiza once variantes morfológicas y morfosintácticas extraídas de un corpus de textos recogidos en la ciudad de Damasco durante los años 2007 y 2010, y producidos casi exclusivamente por informantes jóvenes. Los resultados hallados son comparados con la información existente en gramáticas y artículos previos, y demuestran una rápida estandarización que está teniendo lugar a través de la reducción de variantes (koinización), el declive o desaparición de rasgos tradicionales (variación), y la propagación de variantes anteriormente relacionadas con ciertos colectivos a otros (homogéneización). Por último, el artículo señala nuevas tendencias del árabe de Damasco detectadas en nuestro corpus las cuales requieren más estudio.

Highlights

  • This study will point out some linguistic changes observed in Damascus, the Syrian capital, in the years previous to 2011.2 It analyzes, from a sociolinguistic perspective, a variety of morphological and morpho-syntactical features to show that Damascus Arabic is in continuous permutation trending toward standardization

  • Our findings will be compared with the data available in previous works focusing on Damascus Arabic, the grammars of conjunction meaning ‘when: lamma and lamman (Cowell)[4], Grotzfeld[5], and Ambros[6], and the compilation of texts of Bloch & Grotzfeld[7]

  • (2) Relative pronouns: The variant halli is in clear decline: none of the young informants used it, implying its total extinction is imminent

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Summary

Introduction

This study will point out some linguistic changes observed in Damascus, the Syrian capital, in the years previous to 2011.2 It analyzes, from a sociolinguistic perspective, a variety of morphological and morpho-syntactical features to show that Damascus Arabic is in continuous permutation trending toward standardization. As this paper will show, Damascus Arabic exhibits many signals of standardization, among them the significant reduction of variables (koineization), the decline or disappearance of traditional features[20] (variety shifting), and the reduction of differences among different communities or collectives (homogenization) All these tendencies have been previously detected but seem to be more active today. These two informants were selected as examples of the migrants coming from other regions of the country who have lived and studied for a long time in the capital and have accommodated their native varieties to the dominant one (in this case Damascus Arabic) As for those born and raised abroad, the aim was to detect any particularity due to their language isolation.

Analysis
Relative pronouns
Indefinite pronoun ḥada ~ ḥadan
The particle ma in non-verbal negations
Verbal modifiers for the future tense
Verbal modifiers expressing the progressive aspect
1.10 Distal locative demonstrative
1.11 Temporal conjunction lamma ~ lamman
Findings
Conclusion
Full Text
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