Coptic Grammatical Influence on Egyptian Arabic

ARABIC DIALECTS are generally considered to have resulted from the influence of older languages of the Near East on what is sometimes termed Koine.2 Accordingly, Egyptian Arabic is supposed to be greatly influenced by Coptic which continued to be used by some Egyptians as late as the 16th century. The Coptic grammatical influence on Egyptian Arabic has been the subject of sharp controversy among scholars who maintained that Coptic left a distinct influence on Egyptian Arabic and others who opposed this view denying even a trace of such influence.3 From the linguistic point of view, the study of language interference begins with bilingualism which exists when two languages such as Coptic and Arabic come in contact. A bilingual person who habitually employs two languages may inadvertently introduce features of one into the other. Accordingly, interference between two languages in a bilingual community normally takes place in those features of the language which are least discernable by the individual speaker. Languages in contact normally do not influence each other in morphology and syntax as readily as they do in phonology, because the grammatical features of any language are considered to be relatively fixed and hence do not easily allow for as much linguistic interference.4 Morphological interference is generally manifested in (1) false analogy,5 (2) incorrect seg

Arabic · Linguistics · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis · Philosophy

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