Semitic Dialects and Dialectology

Characterised by the multiplicity and diversity of research and methodology, the European tradition of Semitic linguistics has always supported fieldwork and highly valued the data obtained in this way as it allows to create an interesting dynamic for linguistic studies itself. In the spirit of this tradition and to uphold it, the present book is a collection of articles based on data gathered primarily during field research expeditions. The volume is divided into two parts—Studies on various specific linguistic issues and Texts containing previously unpublished transcriptions of audio recordings in Arabic dialects, Maltese and Jibbali/Shehret.Die europäische Tradition der semitischen Linguistik, die sich durch Vielfalt der Forschungsmethoden auszeichnet, hat dialektologische Feldforschung immer hoch geschätzt, da die gewonnenen Sprachaufnahmen im Kontext der älteren Sprachformen gesetzt werden und somit eine hochgradig interessante Dynamik in der Sprachwissenschaft ermöglichen. Im Geiste dieser Tradition und um sie aufrechtzuerhalten, ist das vorliegende Buch eine Sammlung von Artikeln, deren Daten vor allem während der Feldforschung gesammelt wurden. Der Band gliedert sich in zwei Teile - Studien zu verschiedenen spezifischen linguistischen Fragestellungen und Texte mit bisher unveröffentlichten Transkriptionen von Audioaufnahmen in arabischen Dialekten, Maltesisch und Jibbali/Shehret

POESÍA BEDUINA FEMENINA EN EL SUR DE TÚNEZ

This article deals with poetry and songs performed particularly by women in the Bedouin dialect of the Maṛāzīg tribe in Southern Tunisia. The poems are transcribed and translated. It is differentiated between ġnē which means simply “song” and ṛubbāž which are lullabies.Este artículo se ocupa de la poesía y canciones que componen especialmente las mujeres en el dialecto beduino de la tribu de los Maṛāzīg, sur de Túnez. Los poemas se transcriben y traducen. Se diferencia entre ġnē, que simplemente significa “canción”, y ṛubbāž, es decir, canciones de cuna

ASUNTOS FEMENINOS EN ÁRABE DIALECTAL: PALABRAS Y EXPRESIONES RELACIONADAS CON EL CUERPO FEMENINO Y LA REPRODUCCIÓN

The article on comparative Arabic lexicography includes an analysis of semantic fields specific to “women’s issues” as well as a comprehensive list of lexical items on more than thirty Arabic dialects provided by our contributors.Este artículo sobre lexicografía árabe comparada incluye el análisis de algunos campos semánticos específicos de los “asuntos femeninos” además de una lista de términos sobre el tema en más de treinta dialectos árabes, provistos por los autores que han contribuido

Asymmetric use of diminutives and hypocoristics to pet animals in Italian, German, English, and Arabic

This paper investigates diminutives and hypocoristics used in asymmetric verbal communication with pet animals in three European languages and a Semitic language. Italian, German, English, and Tunisian Arabic display different structural and communicative richness of diminutives, as well as dissimilar customs and sociocultural norms. The paper focusses on pragmatic meanings and functions, including the usages where pragmatic functions are supplemented by semantic meanings. Our data were collected by parallel semi-formal interviews of native speakers of the four languages investigated in order to test our hypotheses that different cultural environments exploit the pragmatic potentials of hypocoristics and diminutive forms in different ways when addressing pet animals or speaking about them. Diminutives are often used with pets in analogy to child-directed speech, mainly to express empathy and in familiar contexts

Typological impact of morphological richness and priority of pragmatics over semantics in Italian, Arabic, German, and English diminutives

This paper examines the impact of the typological property of morphological richness on diminutive formation in Italian, Austrian German, English, and Tunisian Arabic, and the priority of the pragmatics over the semantics of diminutives in these languages. Whereas the semantic meaning of diminutives relates to the smallness of the diminutive noun, their pragmatic meaning (including mitigation, endearment, sympathy, empathy, irony, and sarcasm) has the whole speech act as its scope. Secondarily, hypocoristics are also dealt with, in addition to the (generally ignored) intermediate category of quasi-hypocoristics (e.g. German Vat+i ‘daddy’), which refer to one specific person, like names. Arabic diminutive formation is only root-based, English only word-based, whereas German and Italian are both. In this paper we hypothesise that the morphological richness of languages has the following impacts on: 1. high type and token frequencies of diminutives: Italian > Arabic > German > English; 2. number of productive diminutive patterns (9 Italian suffixes plus interfixes, 5 Arabic internal schemata plus 1 suffix, 4 German suffixes plus umlaut, 3 English suffixes); 3. number of different patterns applying to the same base (if pragmatic, no pattern or lexical blocking), e.g. Italian vipp-ino/-etto/-uccio/-ar-ello (Dressler et al. 2020); 4. combinations of diminutive suffixes: Italian > German, none in English; repetition of the same suffix only in Italian. Both 3 and 4 are inherently impossible for Arabic internal schemas; 5. Italian is the freest language in attributing to DIM both the head and the non-head property of changing (or not) the gender, and of transforming (or not) adjectives into nouns. In contrast to Arabic, English and German turn adjectives into nouns, and German also gender into neuter, with the only exception of (quasi-)hypocoristics and of child- or pet-centered speech. The data analysed in this paper are from Viennese German, South, Central and Northwest Tunisian (Bedouin) Arabic, the Tuscan variety of Italian, and British English, mostly stemming from our 31 previous publications on diminutives/hypocoristics. Our focus is on diminutives in asymmetric communication with pet animals, here examined from a typological viewpoint

Semitic Dialects and Dialectology

Characterised by the multiplicity and diversity of research and methodology, the European tradition of Semitic linguistics has always supported fieldwork and highly valued the data obtained in this way as it allows to create an interesting dynamic for linguistic studies itself. In the spirit of this tradition and to uphold it, the present book is a collection of articles based on data gathered primarily during field research expeditions. The volume is divided into two parts—Studies on various specific linguistic issues and Texts containing previously unpublished transcriptions of audio recordings in Arabic dialects, Maltese and Jibbali/Shehret