Modern South Arabian Languages Research Articles

Epenthesis and vowel intrusion in Central Dhofari Mehri

Abstract The paper discusses epenthesis and vowel intrusion in the Central Dhofari variety of Mehri, one of six endangered Modern South Arabian languages indigenous to southern Arabia. Mehri is spoken by members of the Mahrah tribe in southern Oman, eastern Yemen, parts of southern and eastern Saudi Arabia and in communities in parts of the Gulf and East Africa. The estimated number of Mehri speakers is between 100,000–180,000. Following Hall (2006), this study distinguishes between two types of inserted vowels: epenthetic vowels, which repair illicit syllable structures, and intrusive vowels, which transition between consonants. The paper examines how the properties of epenthetic and intrusive vowels as proposed by Hall relate to Mehri.

The Personal Pronouns of The Mehri Language as Spoken in Saudi Arabia

Mehri is one of six Modern South Arabian languages spoken in southern Arabia. These languages have been noted for their retention of Semitic phonological and grammatical features that have disappeared from other Semitic languages. Mehri is spoken in Oman, Yemen, in parts of southern and eastern Saudi Arabia, and in some of Gulf States. Mehri is classified by UNESCO as “definitely endangered”. Previous studies of Omani and Yemeni Mehri exist, but there have been no studies on Mehri that are used in Saudi Arabia. Morphologically, the dialect groups of Mehri differ in that eastern Yemeni Mehri, also known as Mahriyōt, distinguishes gender in the second person singular independent pronouns, whereas Omani Mehri, Mehreyyet, and western Yemeni Mehri do not. However, Mahriyōt and Mehreyyet differ from western Yemeni Mehri in that they exhibit dual pronouns and dual verb inflections. This study examines number/gender marking in the dependent and independent pronouns of the Mehri spoken in Dammam in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia. Twelve hours of recordings were made during interviewing eleven Mehri speakers (seven males and 4 females) who are living in Dammam. Some of the informants were born in Dammam and others had moved there in different years.

The Enigma of Mehri and Southern Peninsular Arabic Existential śī and šī

Abstract The Modern South Arabian languages and the many varieties of Arabic share in the functions of a particle, realised in the largest extant MSA language, Mehri, as si and variously in Arabic as šay(y), še, ši and ši. In the Modern South Arabian languages and in the Arabic varieties of southern Arabian Peninsula, si and reflexes of ši serve as existential particles with a meaning analogous to English ‘there is/was’. The doublet si/ši also performs other grammatical operations in both sets of languages, functioning as partitives, polar interrogatives and as expressing the various meanings of ‘thing’. This similarity of form and function in Arabic and MSA suggests borrowing from one language to the other, although shared inheritance cannot be discounted completely. The assumption about Arabic reflexes of ši is that their grammatical functions derive originally from that word for ‘thing’ (of which there are others in both languages). Similarly, the assumption has been that MSA si is borrowed from the same Arabic word. Nevertheless, the analogous usages between Mehri and Arabic give cause to reassess such assumptions, leading to the opposite conclusion: The borrowing proceeded from MSA to Arabic and the substantive meaning is the end form, not the origin.

Writing on Islamic Apologetics in an Unwritten Tongue. An Unusual Sample of Transitional Prose from the Island of Soqotra

Soqotri is a Modern South Arabian language spoken by 100 000 inhabitants of the Island of Soqotra. The island is famous for its narrative art, first revealed to the Western world by the Austrian South Arabian Expedition around 1900. Until recently, Soqotri functioned as an unwritten language, and Soqotra’s traditional lore has mainly been transmitted orally. From 2014 on, an Arabic-based writing system for Soqotri has been implemented by a Russian-Yemeni research team. Originally intended as a means of preservation of the traditional oral lore, the writing system proves to be capable of meeting other intellectual demands – notably, to create original, non-traditional compositions. Apologetic and propagandistic works pertaining to the Muslim faith are among the first genres of the nascent Soqotri prose. The article analyzes one such composition in an attempt to trace the thorny path from orality to literacy on Soqotri soil: the adaptation of traditional narrative techniques; the difficult balance between purism and innovation; and interaction with Arabic. It shows that the concept of transitional text, mostly applied to poetry in modern literary research, can also be used about prose, including religiously motivated writing.

An Analysis of the Modern South Arabian Languages as ‘Islamic Languages’

Abstract The Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL) are seldom mentioned in Islamic studies, as they never served as a literary vehicle. They began to be written only very recently, mainly in text messages, and their use is confined to the domestic environment and oral poetry. Despite this, the MSAL fall neatly within Bausani’s concept of “lingua islamica”: firstly, they have been influenced by an Arabic superstratum since time immemorial, which left numerous traces in their lexis and, to a lesser extent, in other linguistic domains. Secondly, their speakers embraced Islam in the course of a slow but steady process, which began with the wars of apostasy (632-33 CE) and was still ongoing in mid-20th century. Hence, the Islamic culture, conveyed by their Arabic-speaking neighbours, whom they felt as more prestigious, exerted an enormous pressure on the cultural setting of MSAL speakers. Additionally, and in contrast with other Islamic languages, virtually every speaker of a MSAL is proficient in Arabic, and has been so for at least five centuries. In light of the above-mentioned facts, this study describes the extent to which the MSAL can be considered Islamic languages, by looking at their phonetics, morphology, syntax and lexis through the lens of Bausani’s framework. The conclusions show that the MSAL retain remarkably resilient native elements which co-exist with likewise strong Arabic/Islamic elements in a culturally and linguistically functional system.

Soqotri Lullabies

In the Autumn of 2019, the present author, in collaboration with Sarali Gintsburg and Vitaly Naumkin, was able to collect, decipher and analyze 18 lullabies in the Modern South Arabian language Soqotri (Island of Soqotra, Gulf of Aden, Yemen). Besides numerous text samples, the article contains a brief history of the previous research, a systematic comparison between the newly gathered texts and those published by David Heinrich Müller in 1905, as well as some comparative remarks pertaining to the Old Babylonian lullabies – the earliest known specimens of this genre.

Soqotrano-Biblica

Abstract The article investigates the thematic and stylistic parallelism between Old Testament books (primarily, but not exclusively, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs) and the oral poetry in the Modern South Arabian language Soqotri. Striking similarities between the two corpora, noted already by the father of Soqotri studies in the West, David Heinrich Müller, are investigated in depth on the basis of the author’s fieldwork experience on the island.

Facing Another: The Attenuation of Contact as Space in Dhofar, Oman

AbstractThis article considers the properly spatial aspects of communicative practices among speakers of Śħerēt, a Modern South Arabian language, living in Dhofar, Oman. I argue that participants i...

The broken plural in Soqotri

AbstractThe article investigates the broken pural in the Modern South Arabian language Soqotri (island of Soqotra, Gulf of Aden, Yemen). It is based on extensive field research and rich collections of lexical evidence. Primarily synchronic in its approach, the article pays attention to historical problems of Modern South Arabian and Semitic phonology and morphology whenever appropriate.

A note on the order of constituents in the Mehri Noun Phrase

Abstract Data elicited from native speakers of Mehri and, to a lesser extent, Jibbali—two extant Modern South Arabian languages—show that within the extended nominal phrase, the noun precedes adjectives and the numerals one and two, but follows numerals from three up. This yields the following order: Num≥3 >> Noun >> Num=1,2 >> Adjective. Demonstratives appear between the noun and the numerals one or two, Noun >> Dem >> Num=1,2 >> Adjective, but when the noun is preceded by numerals from three up, the order is Dem >> Num≥3 >> Noun >> Adjective. Following Cinque (2005), I argue that these orders can be explained by taking the constituent order derived by external merge to be Dem >> Num≥3 >> Num=1,2 >> Adjective >> Noun and having the noun (more precisely, the minimal noun phrase) move step-by-step to a position immediately above, and therefore to the left of Num=1,2. The noun cannot move above Num≥3 and since it cannot skip it, it also remains below Dem.

‘The Lord’: An Apology for the Muslim Faith from the Island of Soqotra1

Abstract The present study is a unique witness of the nascent literacy in the Modern South Arabian language Soqotri (Island Soqotra, Gulf of Aden, Yemen). For the first time, a consciously created, non-traditional specimen of Soqotri narrative appears both in the newly designed Arabic-based Soqotri script and the standard Semitological transcription, along with an English translation and philological annotations. The motivation behind the creation of this piece is, strikingly, neither artistic nor scientific, but religious, which opens new avenues for the development of the Soqotri language in complex framework of todays Arab and Islamic world: contrary to the widespread belief, Soqotri is not necessarily bound to the transmission of the traditional oral lore, but can serve as an efficient vehicle for creating and publishing texts pertaining to the vital interests of todays islanders.

Lexical Resemblance among Modern South Arabian Languages in Oman

Modern South Arabian (MSA) languages make one central group of three distinct language groups that comprise minority languages in Oman. Contrary to their counterparts spoken in the north of Oman, MSA languages are spoken in the southern part of the country with some spoken in neighboring Yemen. Due to both geographical and linguistic proximity among these languages, they are often viewed even by some of their speakers as dialects of one another rather than languages of their own. Accordingly, the improper term 'dialects' is often used to refer to these languages in reference to other languages within the group. Chiefly based on common lexical items, this view, however, is unsubstantiated on research basis. This paper, hence, is an attempt to vindicate such view by measuring the extent of lexical resemblance among these languages using the Swadesh's one hundred word list as its framework. To this effect, speakers were asked to report word recognition of lexical items under investigation as well as mutual intelligibility to sentences in which recognized lexical items were used. Findings show that although there is a huge lexical resemblance among these languages exhibited by the fact that speakers could recognize numerous words from these languages, native speakers reported minimal mutual intelligibility to these languages.

Documenting and analysing the Modern South Arabian Languages in Oman: the OmanSaM project

Documenting and analysing the Modern South Arabian Languages in Oman: the OmanSaM project

Description of Number, Person and Tense Features in the Verbal Morphologies of Jibbāli and Lari

The study describes a few linguistic features in the verbal morphologies of two understudied languages: Jibbāli and Lari. Jibbāli, a Modern South Arabian language spoken in the southern part of the Sultanate of Oman and Lari, an Indo-Iranian language spoken in Iran, are at risk of being endangered due to the facts that (1) they lack a writing system, (2) they are not taught at schools, (3) they are not the official languages in Oman and Iran and, most importantly, (4) there is no effort recorded to preserve these languages. Therefore, the study aims at exposing the linguistic richness of Jibbāli and Lari through describing the tendencies of their verbal morphologies. This may help revitalize a substantial linguistic aspect of these languages. However, since this study is limited in space, it only focuses on certain morphological features which make these languages stand out. The researchers observe a few undocumented linguistic tendencies in Jibbāli and Lari which may attract attention for further studies. For example, Lari, unlike other Iranian languages, lacks an auxiliary on the progressive tense which is largely expressed via morphemes. Jibbāli also exhibits some linguistic tendencies manifested by having a pronoun that refers to the speaker and another (exclusive) person in the conversation. Jibbāli is also characterized by abundant verbs which exhibit internal change along with a few affixes. Where relevant, features from the verbal morphologies of the two languages are delineated with examples collected through fieldworks and personal communication. Findings revealed that Lari is, by and large, a linear language in which affixes dock on bases to express grammatical contrasts while Jibbāli is highly inflectional with verbal affixes (number, person and tense) and morpho-phonological changes. In addition, affixes were found to play a crucial role in marking tenses and mood in Lari while Jibbāli employed a dual system in marking number.

Description of Number, Person and Tense Features in the Verbal Morphologies of Jibbāli and Lari

The study describes a few linguistic features in the verbal morphologies of two understudied languages: Jibbāli and Lari. Jibbāli, a Modern South Arabian language spoken in the southern part of the Sultanate of Oman and Lari, an Indo-Iranian language spoken in Iran, are at risk of being endangered due to the facts that (1) they lack a writing system, (2) they are not taught at schools, (3) they are not the official languages in Oman and Iran and, most importantly, (4) there is no effort recorded to preserve these languages. Therefore, the study aims at exposing the linguistic richness of Jibbāli and Lari through describing the tendencies of their verbal morphologies. This may help revitalize a substantial linguistic aspect of these languages. However, since this study is limited in space, it only focuses on certain morphological features which make these languages stand out. The researchers observe a few undocumented linguistic tendencies in Jibbāli and Lari which may attract attention for further studies. For example, Lari, unlike other Iranian languages, lacks an auxiliary on the progressive tense which is largely expressed via morphemes. Jibbāli also exhibits some linguistic tendencies manifested by having a pronoun that refers to the speaker and another (exclusive) person in the conversation. Jibbāli is also characterized by abundant verbs which exhibit internal change along with a few affixes. Where relevant, features from the verbal morphologies of the two languages are delineated with examples collected through fieldworks and personal communication. Findings revealed that Lari is, by and large, a linear language in which affixes dock on bases to express grammatical contrasts while Jibbāli is highly inflectional with verbal affixes (number, person and tense) and morpho-phonological changes. In addition, affixes were found to play a crucial role in marking tenses and mood in Lari while Jibbāli employed a dual system in marking number.

Some thoughts on studying the endangered Modern South Arabian Languages

A brief history of the author’s research on the Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL) in Oman and Yemen is given. Using Baṭḥari, the dangers of eliciting speech forms in isolation rather than recording continuous speech are illustrated. The value of comparing material from other languages of the study area, including Arabic dialects, is demonstrated. Lexis impoverishment is illustrated by discussing the many terms that were formerly used for ‘home’ in the MSAL. A discussion of possible social / cultural reasons for the decline of the most endangered MSAL follows, and the question of whether monolingualism was ever a reality for MSAL speakers is addressed. Examples of specialised vocabulary are given, Baṭḥari fishing terms, which illustrate the technical expertise necessary for the correct interpretation of texts, and how quickly this can be lost. A brief look at how MSAL speakers describe those who speak their languages imperfectly concludes the article.

Gesture in Modern South Arabian languages

Until fairly recently most linguistic fieldwork relied on written records of spoken data or audio-only recordings. The recent increase in research focusing on audio-visual data, with emphasis on the co-expressiveness of speech and gesture, has led to a greater understanding of the relationship between language, gesture and thought. In this paper, we discuss gesture and what it illuminates linguistically in two Modern South Arabian Languages: Mehri and Śḥerɛ̄t.

A note on phrasal movement in Modern South Arabian and its consequences

I argue that the predominance of clause-final negation and the ban on object cliticization on perfective verb stems with a subject agreement suffix in the Modern South Arabian languages (MSA) Mehri and Jibbali are both consequences of the fact that in these languages, a verbal projection rather than a verbal head is probed by T(ense) or by a higher functional head. As a result, this verbal projection moves to a position above T and a fortiori above negation. A corollary of verb-projection phrasal movement above T is that the affixal phi features of subject agreement are stranded, bereft of a suitable host. In face of this conundrum, MSA reanalyzes subject agreement as a weak pronoun that undergoes suffixation under adjacency to a verbal host, like a pronominal object suffix. This reanalysis has a price, however, in that only a single suffix is possible on a single host, since only one suffix is adjacent to it. Hence, object pronouns cannot occur as clitics on a verb with a weak pronominal subject suffix.

On some poorly known or unrecognized verbal categories in Soqotri: 1905–2015

The article deals with two hitherto unexplored—to some extent, even unknown—verbal categories of the Modern South Arabian language Soqotri (Island of Soqotra, Gulf of Aden, Yemen), namely the “old imperative” and the n-conditional. Research material is taken from both the early publications of the Austrian expedition and the authors’ own field materials recently collected on the island. It is demonstrated that both categories have survived up to now and can be found—albeit not very frequently—in the living speech of the islanders. In the concluding segments of the article, a few hypotheses about the functional load of the categories under scrutiny are advanced and discussed.

On ejective fricatives in Omani Mehri

Ejective fricatives are extremely rare cross-linguistically. This infrequency is generally attributed to the incompatibility of two aerodynamic requirements: airflow to create noise frication and a high intraoral air pressure to implement ejectivity. Seeking to determine how this incompatibility is solved, this study presents an acoustic investigation of initial and intervocalic ejective fricatives in Mehri, a Modern South Arabian language spoken in Oman. Based on data from 5 Mehri speakers, the analysis of different temporal and non-temporal parameters shows a high degree of variability in the way ejectivity is implemented in fricatives. Much of this variability is shaped by the position of the segments within the word. In initial position, the ejectivity of fricatives translates into a frequent presence of post-frication glottal lags, higher intensity and higher center of gravity. These acoustic attributes are less frequently encountered in intervocalic position. In this position, it is argued, the systematic diphthongization of the following long vowel, induced by ejectivity combined with dorsopharyngealisation, is salient enough to allow the contrast of ejectivity to be recovered.