Quantitative Approach to Variation in Case Inflection in Arabic Documentary Papyri

The Case of ʾab in Construct

Bibliographic Data

ID7863906
AuthorsFokelien Kootstra (0000-0003-1883-1542, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume142
Issue2
Publication date2022-06-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289
PublisherAmerican Oriental Society (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7817/jaos.142.2.2022.ar019
OpenAlexW4288464166
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited4

The Arabic documentary papyri (seventh–ninth centuries Ce) are precious wit- nesses to the day-to-day written Arabic of their time. These texts exhibit consider- able variation in grammar and orthography. Classical Arabic and the prescriptive attitudes of the Arabic grammarians traditionally provided the lens through which the earliest documents of the Islamic period have been read. Since Classical Ara- bic was only fully canonized in the tenth century, approaching the early Arabic papyri, and the variation attested in them, through this standard is anachronistic. This article seeks to understand the language of these documents on their own terms. It employs a quantitative approach to investigate the nominal case system, focusing on the form of ʾab in construct, producing a fine-grained analysis of how inflection operated in early documentary Arabic, and attempts to account for points of divergence within a historical and sociolinguistic framework

Anachronism · Arabic · Art · Classical Arabic · Divergence (linguistics) · Inflection · Linguistics · Literature · Orthography · Political science · Reading (process) · Variation (astronomy) · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis · Law · Philosophy

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