Regional and Sociolinguistic Variation of Personal Pronouns in Dialects of Najdi Arabic

Abstract

This study examines the regional and sociolinguistic variation in the paradigms of personal pronouns, independent and dependent, in Najdi dialects. The regional dialects are Central, Qassim, and Northern. The social dialects are sub-varieties of the Central dialect: Hamadan, Hawazin, and Sedentary. The data was collected using the sociolinguistic interview of 25 speakers. It was found that there were more variations in the personal pronoun forms than what have been reported in the literature. When comparing forms with Standard Arabic, the Central dialects are more conservative in the number of changes to the forms. However, Qassim and Northern have retained gender distinction in plural forms while Central dialects did not. This study introduced forms of personal pronouns that were never mentioned in the literature.