A group for academics interested in vernacular Arabic varieties spoken in the Levant, in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Turkey (historically in Adana, Mersin & Hatay), & in diaspora.

Files List

  • The Phonemic System of Damascus Arabic By Jean Cantineau  
    In category: Syrian varieties.
    Uploaded by on 18 January 2023.

    The following remarks concerning the phonemic system ot Damascus Arabic have been suggested by an extensive review by Charles A. Ferguson 1 of the Manuel etemenlaire d' arabe oriental ( parler de Damas) that I wrote in collaboration with Youssef Helbaoui. Although there is, in Ferguson's appraisal of that system and mine, a wide measure of agreement, several of his criticisms reveal differences of approach and theoretical divergences which I have deemed worth while presenting and discussing.

  • A Preliminary Study on the Verbal System of the Syrian Dialect of Ṭarṭūs. By Emanuela De Blasio  
    In category: Syrian varieties.
    Uploaded by on 18 January 2023.

    The present study focuses on the analysis of the verbal system of Arabic spoken in Ṭarṭūs, a city located on the west coast of Syria. The research analyses the verb above all from the aspectual and modal point of view, with hints to some traits of the rural dialect imported into the city from the Alawite community. The variety of Ṭarṭūs and the surrounding areas falls within the subgroup of coastal dialects of Syria (Behnstedt 1997) and since, as Procházka (2013) points out, they are among the least studied yet, this research may constitute a starting point for further studies and insights into the variety of Ṭarṭūs and the dialects of this area. Keywords Arabic dialectology. Syrian varieties. Ṭarṭūs dialect. Verbal system.

  • The Intonational Phonology of Syrian Arabic: A Preliminary Analysis. By Malek Al Hasan, Shakuntala Mahanta  
    In category: Syrian varieties.
    Uploaded by on 18 January 2023.

    Syrian speakers of Arabic are distinguished from speakers of other Arabic dialects by using “singing intonation” in their utterances. This paper examines the intonational patterns occurring in Syrian Arabic using the autosegmental-metrical (AM) approach to intonation. The dialect used in this study is the one spoken in Damascus (Damascene). The analysis is based on two experiments wherein the second experiment utterances were investigated in three word orders of Syrian Arabic (VSO), (SVO), and (VOS). Declarative sentences showed an initial rise (due to stress on the first syllable) and a falling contour towards the end. Stress position and word order were found to change pitch accent type and alignment. Phrase-final drawl was found to be exaggerated in questions leading to vowel lengthening. Index Terms: intonation, syrian arabic, prosody, arabic intonation.