¹ Three linguists read a draft of this study: Haim Blanc, Jacqueline Wei, and Joseph Van Campen. All made helpful suggestions about the substance and the presentation, many of which I followed. The responsibility for all facts and opinions, however, remains mine.

² Cf. C. Brockelmann, Semitische Sprachwissenschaft 41-4 (Berlin-Leipzig, 1916); C. Bergsträsser, Einführung in die semitischen Sprachen 156 (Munich, 1928); D. L. O'Leary, Comparative grammar of the Semitic languages 16-20 (London, 1923); and J. H. Kramers, De semietische Talen 47-8 (Leiden, 1949).

³ This thesis is not new: the term ‘koine’ has been used before in approximately this sense for the history of the Arabic language; cf. AIEO 14.7 (1956), Enc. of Islam ² 1.574 Col. 1, line 19 ff. (Leiden, 1957). This essay is, however, the first attempt known to me to establish the thesis by a full linguistic argument.

Two diachronic studies of Arabic have appeared recently which attempt to sketch the phonological developments from the koine to a modern dialect, in one case that of Cairo, in the other Jerusalem: H. Birkeland, Growth and structure of the Egyptian Arabic dialect (Oslo, 1952), and I. Garbell, Remarks on the historical phonology of an Eastern Mediterranean Arabic dialect, Word 14.303-45 (1958). My views on Birkeland's study were expressed in a review in Lg. 30.558-64 (1954); the writing of that review was the stimulus for putting the present article on paper. The Garbell study appeared after the article was completed, but footnote references to it have been added. Both studies are structuralist in approach and both present valuable material, the Garbell study being especially rich in historical and dialectal detail. In my view both studies err on the side of placing specific phonological changes at too recent a period and in too localized an area. Many of the changes they attribute separately and at a late date to Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean Arabic are likely to have occurred much earlier, often in the formation of the koine itself. Further investigation is clearly required to determine the relative merits of these views.

⁴ C. Rabin, The beginnings of Classical Arabic, Studia Islamica 4.19-38 (1955); id., Enc. of Islam ² 1.564-7; R. Blachère, Histoire de la littérature arabe 66-82 (Paris, 1952). Certain specific explanations of the origin of the ‘Arabiyyah (e.g. the Meccan or Qurayshi dialect) can be rejected; others (e.g. from the dominant dialect of the Kinda confederacy, the dialect of Ḥīra) can be neither accepted nor rejected until more evidence is available. Unfortunately, the term ‘koine’ (or ‘poetic koine’) has also been used to refer to the pre-Islamic standard which was the basis of the ‘Arabiyyah. Rabin, Beginnings, has pointed out the inappropriateness of this term for a language apparently used little if at all for ordinary conversation. If the term ‘koine’ becomes generally accepted in this meaning, the Arabic koine which is the subject of the present article will have to be called Koine II or something of the sort to differentiate them. Cf. Enc. of Islam ² 1.574, where both uses of koine occur in the same paragraph.

⁵ For statements of the present relationship between Classical Arabic and the dialects, see A. F. Sultanov, National language and script reform in the countries of the Arab East, Akademiku V. A. Gordlevskomu ... 252-74 (Moscow, 1953) [in Russian]; A. Chejne, The role of Arabic in present-day Arab Society, The Islamic literature 10.4:15-54 (April, 1958); C. A. Ferguson, Diglossia, Word 15.325-40 (1959).

⁶ Cf. A. Meillet, Aperçu d'une histoire de la langue grecque 259-64 (Paris, 1913).

⁷ This trend is treated at some length in Birkeland, Growth and structure, as well as in his earlier Altarabische Pausalformen (Oslo, 1940). Cf. also Lg. 30.560, 563 (1954).

⁸ It seems quite likely that the dual forms of verbs and pronouns as well as the dual agreement of adjectives are analogical extensions in ‘Ur-arabisch’ from the dual form of the noun, which was presumably present in Proto-Semitic. But these additional duals were apparently well established, although with regional variations in detail, in the dialects of Arabia at the time of Muḥammad, and were lost again in the development of the modern dialects.

⁹ The examples in this article are kept to the minimum necessary to illustrate the points, and the same words are used repeatedly to illustrate different points in order that the non-Arabist may be able to follow the argument without the burden of too many unfamiliar items to deal with. The usual order of citation will be: Classical form, gloss, colloquial form, with the two Arabic forms in commensurate phonemic notations. Unless otherwise specified, the colloquial items are in a slightly normalized Syrian (= Garbell's Eastern Mediterranean Arabic); they are usually Jerusalem Arabic, but where this is aberrant in the Syrian area a more typical form is supplied. Although a procedure of this kind has obvious pitfalls, it is hoped that no change has been made which affects the argument. Other procedures were rejected because the points to be made would have been obscured in a mass of irrelevant details.

¹⁰ Cf. Rabin, Ancient West Arabian 61-3, map 60 (London, 1951).

^10a Cf. Garbell, Remarks 312.

¹¹ Cf. Rabin, Ancient West Arabian 71-3, map 72; Garbell, Remarks 334.

¹² In some parts of the Syrian dialect area (e.g. Damascus, most of Lebanon) the 'a- prefix has followed the analogy of the other prefixes of the imperfect; but this is clearly a subsequent development, since the ‘a- remains in Iraq, Egypt, and much of the Syrian area, having even spread to Form II and III verbs where the prefix was ‘u- in Classical. Cf. Mélanges Massignon 1.312-3 (Damascus, 1956).

¹³ The suffixal nature of the -l- is shown incontrovertibly by the position of word stress, the lengthening of short vowel before -l-, and the existence of allomorphs of -l- conditioned by the preceding morpheme. Cf. ‘they hit for you’.

¹⁴ An early example of this construction is cited in G. Graf, Der Sprachgebrauch der ältesten christlich-arabischen Literatur 11 (Leipzig, 1905).

¹⁵ The long form is used before a noun under two special conditions: (a) in ordering or listing items, where the following noun may be collective, singular, or plural depending on circumstance (e.g. xamse ‘ahwe ‘five coffees’ in ordering at a restaurant, cf. xams ‘ahāwi ‘five cafes’); and (b) with ethnic collectives having no proper plural (e.g. xamse badu ‘five beduins’).

¹⁶ The Classicism ‘ayyām is also in colloquial use without preceding number. It is sometimes difficult to elicit isolated plural forms without preceding numbers for nouns used in this construction. Informants sometimes give a Classicism with ‘a-, or a totally different plural (e.g. šnhūra), or even a form with t- (e.g. tišhur).

¹⁷ The pattern CiCCah, commonly included among the plurals of paucity, does not fit this discussion.

¹⁸ Cf. M. S. Howell, A grammar of the Classical Arabic language 1.885-8 (Allahabad, 1894); M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes and R. Blachère, Grammaire de l'arabe classique 178-82 (Paris, 1937); H. Fleisch, L'arabe classique 33 (Beirut, 1956).

¹⁹ For the singular some dialects keep the -a- throughout; some lose it completely. In areas where there is partial retention the -a- appears in adjectives of which C₁ or C₂ is a guttural (x ġ H ‘ h ‘) or in Classicisms of various periods. The loss of -a- is probably to be accounted for by vowel assimilation and loss of unstressed /i/ in open syllable (C_aC_īC > *C_iC_īC > CC_īC). Cf. H. Blanc, Studies in North Palestinian Arabic 32 (Jerusalem, 1953); I. Garbell, Remarks 321. The plural seems perfectly regular C_iC_āC > CC_āC.

²⁰ The analysis of this labialization is uncertain. Some linguists recognize the labialized consonants as separate phonemes, others posit a rounded shwa vowel phonemically present but apparent only in the ‘allophones’ of these consonants. In either case the labialization is distinctive.

²¹ In this particular example, used here to keep the illustrative material as limited as possible, these apparent reflexes of /u/ could have developed simply because of the presence of the labial /b/, but other adjectives of the same pattern without labial consonants also show these reflexes (e.g. ). A striking piece of evidence for this *fu ‘āl plural is supplied by Haim Blanc: dialects with second and third degree ‘imālah (e.g. Aleppo, Mosul, Jewish Baghdad) regularly have ē or ī in words derived from C_iC_āC but have ā in these adjective plurals. Examples: klēb, klīb ‘dogs’; Isēn, Isīn ‘tongue'; jmēl, jmīl ‘camels’ but smān, kθār, mlāH.

²² The pause forms of Classical Arabic show a three-way final contrast in each of the high vowel/semivowel ranges viz. -Cuww : -Cū: -Cw and -Ciyy : -Cī: -Cy. In many modern dialects still another possibility is added, the reflexes of the Classical -Cūh and -Cīh. In the u/w range the dialects vary greatly, some even having a full four-way contrast, such as those variants of Syrian Arabic which differentiate the final sequences of ‘adúww ‘enemy', Híliw ‘sweet’, kátabu ‘they wrote’, ‘they wrote it’. But this is rare; usually only a two- or at most three-way contrast obtains, with one reflex for both -Cū and -Cw and, in dialects which have lost final -h, one for both -Cuww and -Cūh. Dialects show similar variation in the degree of retention of final contrasts in the i/y range, but even where a final -iyy: -ī contrast has been preserved, the nisbah ending has always merged with the reflex of -ī, sometimes pulling along with it a few other nouns in -iyy.

²³ Certain preliminary reconstructions can of course be made for the various items but they do not lead very far. For example, it seems likely (a) that mā ‘what’ was very early replaced by *‘áyši ~ *‘ayš (< ‘ayyu šay'in), which led to the modern dialect forms such as Syr. ‘ēš and Moroccan āš, and (b) that side by side with this *‘ayši ~ ‘ayš in certain areas an extended form *‘ayšinhū (< ‘ayyu šay'in huwa) was used, which resulted in forms like Iraqi šinu and Syrian šū. But this still leaves unanswered such questions as the reason for the loss of mā, the origin of Egyptian ‘ēh, and many points of detail. Reconstructions of other items present similar problems.

²⁴ Cf. W. Fischer, Die demonstrativen Bildungen der neuarabischen Dialekte 186-93 (The Hague, 1958).

²⁵ Cf. Rabin, Ancient West Arabian 39, 89-90, 154-5, 203-5, map 204.

²⁶ The agreement of the dialects on this point has been noted before. Cf. I. Anis, Fī al-lahajāt al-'arabiyyah ² 218 (Cairo, 1952).

²⁷ For a description of the phonology of the 'Arabiyyah cf. J. Cantineau, Esquisse d'une phonologie de l'arabe classique, BSL 43.000-0 (1946). The phonology of the koine as assumed in the present study is roughly equivalent to Garbell's Stage 2, Remarks §2, 301-12, but with a number of differences of detail.

²⁸ Cf. Fück, 'Arabiyah 89; Garbell, Remarks 308. Dialects which have lost the inter-dentals may have instances of /ẓ/ in Classicisms or in re-borrowing of Arabic items from Turkish, but not as the regular reflex of the earlier //. Cf. Garbell, Remarks 317-8.