The Classification of Arabic Dialects: Traditional Approaches, New Proposals, and Methodological Problems

• Other Authors: Bettega, Simone (Editor), Morano, Roberta (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2022
• Subjects: Language; dialect classification; subgrouping; Sudanic Arabic; Egyptian Arabic; definiteness; indefiniteness; specificity; referentiality; determination; article systems; phonological typology; feature geometry; contrastivity; Arabic dialects; consonant reflexes; Mahdia Arabic; Maghribi Arabic; Tunisia; Sahel; urban dialects; Bedouin dialects; villageois dialects; Arabic dialectology; Sociolinguistics; Arabic; Baggara; comparative dialectology; historical dialectology; historical linguistics; dialectology; nomadism; methodology; geography; dialect geography; Arabic epigraphy; Tunisian Arabic; Libyan Arabic; copulas; syntactic isoglosses; cognate infinitive; Lebanese Arabic; typology; Semitic languages; palatalization; nasal; Cairene Arabic; sociophonetics; acoustic phonetics; Moroccan Arabic; Essaouira; Tafilalt; southern Morocco; dialect contact; urban; rural; gələt; qəltu; spoken Arabic; classification; Bedouin Arabic; Jordan; Masāʿīd; spoken Arabic varieties; Jordanian Arabic; Arabic linguistics; n/a
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

The question of how to classify the different varieties of spoken Arabic is a long-standing problem in the fields of Arabic and Semitic linguistics, and it has been addressed by several authors and from a number of different perspectives. This collection of articles represents a further contribution to the vast collective effort of attempting to more effectively assess, organize, and understand the varieties of spoken Arabic, applying a classification of Arabic dialects in the broadest possible sense. The authors who contribute to this volume tackle this issue by examining varieties spoken from the Maghreb to the Mashreq and employing various approaches and perspectives, e.g., diatopic and diachronic, syntactical, and typological.