Phillip W Stokes
Biographic Data
| ID | 711442 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Phillip W Stokes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Phillip W |
| FAMILY NAME | Stokes |
| SIGNATURE | STOKES P W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tennessee at Knoxville |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7847-9064 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Linguistic Nature of Early Christian Arabic Literature
This Element examines the forms of Arabic used by Christians in the early Islamic period in theological treatises and Arabic Bible translations. It argues that linguistic analysis of these texts not only clarifies the nature of early Islamic Arabic but also sheds new light on Christian institutional and intellectual culture. Focusing on nominal case, verbal mood, and gender and number agreement, the study challenges the common view that Christian…
The Jussive in Early Christian Arabic
Gender and Number Agreement in Early Christian Arabic Manuscripts: A Historically ‘Middle’ Feature
The topic of gender and number agreement in Arabic has garnered significant interest in recent years, culminating in the recent monograph by Bettega and D’Anna (2023). The picture that has emerged from these studies is of a system, shared by ancient and modern corpora, in which plural heads can trigger either feminine singular or plural agreement, depending on a variety of pragmatic factors (such as, e.g., animacy and individuation). Further, the…
Key to the Kingdom: Variation as a Key to Understanding the Arabic Gospel Manuscripts
This paper takes a fresh approach to the study of the Arabic Gospel manuscripts. Although considerable success has been achieved at mapping out macro-families, there are still large lacunae in our knowledge of the Arabic Gospels as well as of the linguistic and scribal cultures that produced them. Arabic Gospel manuscripts notoriously vary at every level, and much of the variation is idiosyncratic. In previous work, this variation has by and larg…
Bi-Hī, Bi-Him . . . Fī-Hu: Pronominal Suffix Harmonization Diversity in Some Vocalized Christian Arabic Gospel Manuscripts
This article attempts a foray into the linguistic study of vocalization traditions in Christian Arabic by examining the patterns of 3rd person pronominal suffix harmonization in some vocalized Christian Arabic gospel manuscripts. In normative Classical Arabic, the 3rd person suffixes harmonized with a preceding -i, -ī, or -ay. However, early grammarians documented a much greater diversity of patterns. I document the patterns of nine vocalized Chr…
Nominal Case in Christian Arabic Translations of the Gospels (9th-15th Centuries CE)
Middle Arabic is conventionally defined as existing on a spectrum between colloquial Arabic on the low end and Classical Arabic on the high end. Differences between Middle Arabic and Classical Arabic that are not attested in a modern dialect are typically treated, historically at least, as due to pseudo-correction. This is especially true of non-Classical manifestations of nominal case. In this paper, I tag all instances of alif al-tanwīn – which…
ʾinǧīl-in Mubīn: A mixed archaic, Quranic, and Middle Arabic translation of the gospels and its implications for the nature of Middle Arabic
This paper undertakes a close linguistic study of a unique translation of the gospels into Arabic as attested in three manuscript witnesses. The translation is unique insofar as it imitates the Quran, especially in lexicon and rhyme. Linguistically it mixes numerous features specific to the Quran with features from both the Classical Arabic (ClAr) tradition, including poetic archaisms not typical of standard ClAr, as well as from Christian Middle…
A Historical Reconstruction of Some Pronominal Suffixes in Modern Dialectal Arabic
The morphology of the pronominal suffixes in dialectal Arabic are of particular interest for scholars of the history of Arabic for two main reasons. First, multiple dialects attest suffixes that, from a comparative perspective, apparently retain final short vowels. The second and more complicated issue concerns the vowels which precede the suffixes in the dialects, which are thought to either have been case inflecting or epenthetic. In this paper…
Gahwat Al-Murra: The N + DEF-ADJ syntagm and the *at>ahshift in Arabic
Multiple varieties of Arabic attest a definite noun + adjective syntagm in which only the adjective is marked morphologically with the article, e.g., Lebanesebēt iz-zġīr"the small house". The feminine ending*-ahis everywhere realized -(v)t, e.g., Baghdadisint il-māḍye"last year". Most have assumed that it was originally appositional, and re-analysed as a construct, prompted perhaps by the loss of case (Hopkins 1984; Pat-El 2017). A few scholars (…
Gahwat Al-Murra: The N + DEF-ADJ syntagm and the *at>ahshift in Arabic
Multiple varieties of Arabic attest a definite noun + adjective syntagm in which only the adjective is marked morphologically with the article, e.g., Lebanesebēt iz-zġīr"the small house". The feminine ending*-ahis everywhere realized -(v)t, e.g., Baghdadisint il-māḍye"last year". Most have assumed that it was originally appositional, and re-analysed as a construct, prompted perhaps by the loss of case (Hopkins 1984; Pat-El 2017). A few scholars (…
Gahwat Al-Murra: The N + DEF-ADJ syntagm and the *at>ahshift in Arabic
Multiple varieties of Arabic attest a definite noun + adjective syntagm in which only the adjective is marked morphologically with the article, e.g., Lebanesebēt iz-zġīr"the small house". The feminine ending*-ahis everywhere realized -(v)t, e.g., Baghdadisint il-māḍye"last year". Most have assumed that it was originally appositional, and re-analysed as a construct, prompted perhaps by the loss of case (Hopkins 1984; Pat-El 2017). A few scholars (…
A Historical Reconstruction of Some Pronominal Suffixes in Modern Dialectal Arabic
The morphology of the pronominal suffixes in dialectal Arabic are of particular interest for scholars of the history of Arabic for two main reasons. First, multiple dialects attest suffixes that, from a comparative perspective, apparently retain final short vowels. The second and more complicated issue concerns the vowels which precede the suffixes in the dialects, which are thought to either have been case inflecting or epenthetic. In this paper…
Key to the Kingdom: Variation as a Key to Understanding the Arabic Gospel Manuscripts
This paper takes a fresh approach to the study of the Arabic Gospel manuscripts. Although considerable success has been achieved at mapping out macro-families, there are still large lacunae in our knowledge of the Arabic Gospels as well as of the linguistic and scribal cultures that produced them. Arabic Gospel manuscripts notoriously vary at every level, and much of the variation is idiosyncratic. In previous work, this variation has by and larg…
Bi-Hī, Bi-Him . . . Fī-Hu: Pronominal Suffix Harmonization Diversity in Some Vocalized Christian Arabic Gospel Manuscripts
This article attempts a foray into the linguistic study of vocalization traditions in Christian Arabic by examining the patterns of 3rd person pronominal suffix harmonization in some vocalized Christian Arabic gospel manuscripts. In normative Classical Arabic, the 3rd person suffixes harmonized with a preceding -i, -ī, or -ay. However, early grammarians documented a much greater diversity of patterns. I document the patterns of nine vocalized Chr…
Nominal Case in Christian Arabic Translations of the Gospels (9th-15th Centuries CE)
Middle Arabic is conventionally defined as existing on a spectrum between colloquial Arabic on the low end and Classical Arabic on the high end. Differences between Middle Arabic and Classical Arabic that are not attested in a modern dialect are typically treated, historically at least, as due to pseudo-correction. This is especially true of non-Classical manifestations of nominal case. In this paper, I tag all instances of alif al-tanwīn – which…
ʾinǧīl-in Mubīn: A mixed archaic, Quranic, and Middle Arabic translation of the gospels and its implications for the nature of Middle Arabic
This paper undertakes a close linguistic study of a unique translation of the gospels into Arabic as attested in three manuscript witnesses. The translation is unique insofar as it imitates the Quran, especially in lexicon and rhyme. Linguistically it mixes numerous features specific to the Quran with features from both the Classical Arabic (ClAr) tradition, including poetic archaisms not typical of standard ClAr, as well as from Christian Middle…
The Jussive in Early Christian Arabic
Gender and Number Agreement in Early Christian Arabic Manuscripts: A Historically ‘Middle’ Feature
The topic of gender and number agreement in Arabic has garnered significant interest in recent years, culminating in the recent monograph by Bettega and D’Anna (2023). The picture that has emerged from these studies is of a system, shared by ancient and modern corpora, in which plural heads can trigger either feminine singular or plural agreement, depending on a variety of pragmatic factors (such as, e.g., animacy and individuation). Further, the…
The Linguistic Nature of Early Christian Arabic Literature
This Element examines the forms of Arabic used by Christians in the early Islamic period in theological treatises and Arabic Bible translations. It argues that linguistic analysis of these texts not only clarifies the nature of early Islamic Arabic but also sheds new light on Christian institutional and intellectual culture. Focusing on nominal case, verbal mood, and gender and number agreement, the study challenges the common view that Christian…
Arabic (9 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (9 works) · Linguistics (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · History (7 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Literature (4 works)