Linguistic Variation in Arabic Sources from al-Andalus: the Manual of ʿAbd al-Raʾūf (Cordova, 10th c.)
doi: https://doi.org/10.31810/rsel.53.2.8
Keywords:
Arabic manuscripts; historical sociolinguistics; linguistic variation; non-standard written (NSW) Arabic, and dialectologyAbstract
This paper explores the notion of linguistic variation in Arabic written sources from the premodern period. More specifically, it examines the two surviving manuscripts (ms. M-O-9 y ms. d3643) of Risāla fī ādāb al-Ḥisba wa-l-Muḥtasib by ʿAbd al-Raʾūf, an Andalusi ḥisba manual from the 10th c. CE, with the goal of describing the use of non-standard features and identifying the factors that drive this type of alternation. The linguistic description of the ḥisba texts shows that the use of non-standard forms occurs at all levels: orthographic, phonetic, lexical, morphological, and syntactical. In addition, it suggests that there are, at least, four internal and external factors that seem to motivate the appearance of linguistic variation: orthographic conventions of non-classical or non-standard written sources, the dialectal environment surrounding the document’s composition, sociolinguistic context, and, finally, semantic and pragmatic aspects. The analysis reveals that non-standard forms in these documents perform similar functions to those attributed in other oral and written varieties of Arabic. These findings confirm that the linguistic variation shown in ms. M-O-9 and in ms. d3643 is not random; that is, it follows regular patterns of language use, which represents a promising path for future research on non-standard written varieties of Arabic from the Islamic West.
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