The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic
ISBN13: 9780199226696ISBN10: 0199226695
Paperback,
336 pages
Also available:
Hardback
Nov 2007,
In Stock
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$55.00 (06)See more from the series
Description
This book is the first comprehensive account of the phonology and morphology of Arabic. It is a pioneering work of scholarship, based on the author's research in the region.Arabic is a Semitic language spoken by some 250 million people in an area stretching from Morocco in the West to parts of Iran in the East. Apart from its great intrinsic interest, the importance of the language for phonological and morphological theory lies, as the author shows, in its rich root-and-pattern morphology and its large set of guttural consonants. Dr Watson focuses on two eastern dialects, Cairene and San'ani. Cairene is typical of an advanced urban Mediterranean dialect and has a cultural importance throughout the Arab world; it is also the variety learned by most foreign speakers of Arabic. San'ani, spoken in Yemen, is representative of a conservative peninsula dialect. In addition the book makes extensive reference to other dialects as well as to classical and Modern Standard Arabic.
The volume opens with an overview of the history and varieties of Arabic, and of the study of phonology within the Arab linguistic tradition. Successive chapters then cover dialectal differences and similarities, and the position of Arabic within Semitic; the phoneme system and the representation of phonological features; the syllable and syllabification; word stress; derivational morphology; inflectional morphology; lexical phonology; and post-lexical phonology. The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic will be of great interest to Arabists and comparative Semiticists, as well as to phonologists, morphologists, and linguists more generally.
Features
- The first comprehensive account of the phonology and morphology of modern spoken Arabic to be published in any language
- Based largely upon the author's own research
- Unique coverage of the little-studied dialect of San'ani Arabic
- Theoretically innovative and aware, yet accessible to Arabic language specialists outside linguistics
Product Details
336 pages; Line drawings; 6 1/8 X 9 1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-922669-6ISBN10: 0-19-922669-5About the Author(s)
Janet C. E. Watson has held lectureships in Arabic at the universities of Edinburgh, Durham, and Salford, and has also taught at the University of Manchester. She travels regularly to the Middle East and has spent extended periods of time in Yemen and Egypt. A fluent speaker of Yemeni Arabic, her recent research work has concentrated on the phonology of Arabic. Her previous publications include A Syntax of San'ani Arabic (1993), Sbahtu! A Course in San'ani Arabic (1996), and Wasf San'a: Texts in San'ani Arabic (2000).
