Since our data are fragmentary, it is difficult to assess their value, let alone set up a dialect map of the pre-Islamic peninsula (see Map 4.1 for the distribution of our information on the pre-Islamic dialects). The following eight phonological features are frequently mentioned as major differences between the two groups of pre- Islamic dialects.

First, in the Eastern dialects, final consonant clusters did not contain a vowel, whereas in the Western dialects they had an anaptyctic vowel, e.g. (West/East) husun/husn ‘beauty’, fahid/fihd ‘thigh’, kalima/kilma ‘word’, ‘unuq/’unq ‘neck’. This difference is probably connected with a difference in stress: it may be surmised that the Eastern dialects had a strong expiratory stress, hence the absence of a vowel. It is difficult to say which of the two variants is original; in Classical Arabic sometimes the one, sometimes the other, sometimes both variants have survived.

Second, the Eastern dialects must have known some form of vowel harmony or assimilation, e.g. (West/East) ba’ir/bi’ir ‘camel’, minhum/minhim ‘from them’. This feature, too, may be connected with the strong expiratory stress of the Eastern dialects, which encourages assimilation. The Classical language retained the assimilation in those cases where the suffix was preceded by an i, e.g. fihim ‘in them’ (where the Higaz had fihum without assimilation). Third, the long vowel a underwent ‘imala ‘inclination’, i.e. a fronted pronunciation of the vowel towards [e], in the Eastern dialects, whereas the Western dialects were characterised by what the grammarians call tafhim . Usually, this term indicates the centralised pronunciation of a vowel after a velarised consonant, but here it probably indicates the pronunciation as a ‘pure’ a, or perhaps in some cases even as o, namely in those words which are indicated in Qur’anic spelling with a waw, e.g. salat, zakat, hayat, possibly also in other words, e.g. salam . Sometimes we find in Nabataean inscriptions a long a spelled with w, which may reflect an Aramaic pronunciation with o (cf. above, p. 30).

Fourth, the Western dialects may have known a phoneme e : according to the grammarians verbs such as hafa ‘to fear’, sara ‘to become’ were pronounced with ‘imala . But since the ‘imala was otherwise unknown in the Higaz and moreover never occurs in the neighbourhood of a guttural, the grammarians’ remark may refer to the existence of an independent phoneme e . It is unlikely that this e continues a Proto-Semitic e ; perhaps it is an indication for a phonetic development of ay- instead (cf. also above, on Ṩafa’itic diphthongs, Chapter 3,p. 27).

Fifth, the passive of the so-called hollow verbs with a medial w was formed differently in the East ( qula ) and the West ( qila ). Possibly, both forms are a development from an original /y/, which has disappeared from the phonemic inventory of all Arabic dialects but left some traces; the Classical passive of these verbs is qila .

Sixth, the qaf was probably voiceless in the East, voiced in the West; the latter pronunciation became standard practice in early recitation manuals. We have seen above (Chapter 2, p. 21) that the Arabic phoneme q possibly evolved from a phoneme *k, which was neutral with regard to voicing; the Eastern and the Western dialects developed this phoneme in different ways. The Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation of /q/ is voiceless, but in the modern Bedouin dialects it is still realised as a voiced /g/ (cf. below, p. 143).

Seventh, the most remarkable feature of the Higazi dialect has already been mentioned above: the loss of the glottal stop ( hamza ), which was retained in the Eastern dialects (cf. Map 4.2 for the distribution of this feature). In the Western dialects, the loss of the hamza was compensated sometimes by the lengthening of a preceding vowel (e.g. bi’r ‘well’ [becomes] bir, ra’s ‘head’ [becomes] ras, lu’lu ‘pearls’ [becomes] lulu), or it resulted in contraction of vowels ( sa’ala ‘to ask’ sala ) or a change into a corresponding glide (e.g. sa’irun ‘walking’ [becomes] sayirun ; yaqra’u ‘he reads’ [becomes] yaqrawu ). Since Higazi orthography did not have a glottal stop, the original spelling represented the Higazi pronunciation of the words. The sign for hamza is a later addition (cf. below, p. 56).

Eighth, in the Higazi dialect, the prefix of the imperfect contained the vowel a- ; all other dialects formed this prefix with i-, the so-called taltala, one of the pre-Islamic features that have been preserved in the contemporary dialects, which usually have i- . Both vowels represent a generalisation, since more archaic forms of Semitic have a distribution of the prefix-vowels in which i is used for the third person singular masculine and the first person plural, and a for the first person singular, the second person, and the third person singular feminine (cf. Hetzron 1976) . In this case, Classical Arabic has ‘followed’ the Western pattern, since all prefixes in Classical Arabic have a- . ).

The preceding dialectal differences concerned phonetic or phonological differences between the dialects. There are some testimonies that refer to differences at a higher level of linguistic structure. For instance, there may be some evidence for the existence of an undeclined dual in Higazi Arabic; the most famous example is the Qur’anic verse 20/63 ‘inna hadani la-sahirani ‘these two are sorcerers’, in which the particle ‘inna seems to be constructed with a nominative instead of the Classical accusative. This verse caused the commentators a lot of trouble, and we know that in the earliest period of Arabic grammar some of them even suggested regarding this form as a copyists’ error, which should be corrected, either by reading the accusative in the following noun, or by changing the particle to ‘in (cf. below, ‘in almuhaffafa ).

The particles ‘in ‘indeed’ and ‘an ‘that’ as abbreviated forms of ‘inna and ‘anna (the so-called ‘in, ‘an muhaffafa ) with the following noun in the nominative seem to have been more current in the Higazthan in the East. Some examples occur in the Qur’an, e.g. Q 36/32 wa-’in kullun la-ma gami’ un ladayna muhdaruna ‘verily, all will be brought together before Us’. These forms may even be followed by an accusative, e.g. Q 11/111 wa-’in kullan la-ma yuwaffiyannahum rabbuka ‘a’malahum ‘verily, thy Lord will repay everyone their deeds’. Not surprisingly, the grammarians tried to correct such forms, either by changing the case ending of the following word, or by reading the full form ‘inna .

A well-known difference between Higazand Tamim is the construction of ma as a nominal negator. According to the grammarians, ma could be construed in the same way as the verb laysa ‘to be not’, with an accusative in the predicate, e.g. ma huwa kabiran ‘he is not big’. This use of the so-called ma higaziyya did not occur in the Eastern dialects.

. There are some indications that the negation ‘in, which occurs not infrequently in the Qur’an, e.g. Q 11/51 ‘in ‘agriya ‘illa ‘ala lladi fatarani ‘my reward is not due except from Him who created me’, is characteristic of Higazi speech.

In some dialects, a relative di or du (the so-called du ta’iyya, i.e. of the tribe Tayyi’ is attested; this relative does not occur in the Qur’an, but it occurs in the an-Namara inscription (cf. above, p. 31), and it is found in some pre-Islamic poems, e.g. in a line quoted in the Hamasa: li-hada l-mar’i du ga’a sa’iyan ‘to this man who has come to levy tax’ (cf. Reckendorf 1921: 431).

Apart from the possible, but unlikely, occurrence of an undeclined dual in one verse in the Qur’an these points concern relatively minor differences. There is, however, one point that touches upon the core of Arabic syntax, the construction of verbal and nominal sentences. In Classical Arabic, when the verb precedes the agent in the so-called verbal sentence (cf. below, Chapter 6, p. 8o), there is no agreement in number between verb and agent. According to the grammarians, some dialects in the Gahiliyya did allow agreement in this case. Some of the examples they give for this phenomenon ― usually called the ‘akaluni l-baraghit ‘the fleas have bitten me’ syndrome stem from Higazi poets, and there are no Eastern examples. This is the only example of a syntactic feature ascribed to a pre-Islamic dialect that is also found in the modern dialects of Arabic, which do not exhibit the difference between verbal and nominal sentences in the Classical sense of the term and always have agreement between verb and agent. In the modern dialects, the canonical word order is subject-verb-object rather than verb-subject-object as in the Classical language. It is, therefore, not clear whether this feature in Higazi Arabic should be interpreted as the first step towards a later development. In the text of the Qur’an as we have it, this feature does not occur.

The conclusion is that in most cases the language of the Qur’an reflects the Eastern usage whenever differences between Eastern and Western Arabic existed. As regards the pronunciation of the glottal stop in the early Islamic period, it was felt to be more prestigious and more fitting for the recitation of the Holy Book, although there seems to have been considerable opposition on the part of the early reciters to such a pronunciation, which they branded as affected. It is equally obvious, however, from the list of differences that the dialects were not very far apart from each other. Most of the features mentioned above concern phonetic or phonological phenomena. Apart from the ‘akaluni l-baraghit syndrome, the sources mention a few syntactic differences, which we have not listed here, since their status is hard to determine. Some of these almost certainly represent later theorising on the part of the grammarians, for instance, in the case of the various exceptive constructions with ‘illa, for which one dialect is said to have used the nominative and the other the accusative. There is one thing that transpires from such syntactic lughat : if there is any reality to them, both dialect groups must have used case endings. The evidence for an undeclined dual mentioned above is too meagre to warrant any other conclusion. In view of the central role of declension in the various theories about the linguistic situation in the pre-Islamic period, this absence of evidence for declensionless speech in the grammatical literature is crucial for our understanding of the historical development of Arabic.

From The Arabic Language
© 1997 Kees Versteegh
Used by permission of the Edinburgh University Press.