Análisis microbiológicos

Bedouin dialects are associated with people who lead nomadic or semi-nomadic lives. Bedouin dialects have been generally well documented. Although there are some differences between the Bedouin sub-groups, they share many features that put them under one heading. Because they retain many Classical features that are lost from other groups, they are considered more conservative than sedentary groups (Rosenhouse, 2006: 259). However, the distinction between sedentary and Bedouin groups is becoming blurred because of moves to government-led sedentarisaton.

Bedouin subgroups spread to all regions of the Arab world; in her sub-grouping of Bedouin dialects, Rosenhouse (2006: 259-260) provides six main regions where they exist:

(A): The Arabian Peninsula has the North Arabian dialects, Ḥijāz dialects, Southwest Arabian dialects, and Omani dialects. The North Arabian group is subdivided into three dialects: ʕAnizi, Šammari, and Syro-Mesopotamian dialects; some of these tribes live now in Jordan. The Southwest Arabian group includes Yemen, Aden, Hadramawt, and Dhofar.

(B): The Iraqi gǝlǝt dialect and southwest Iranian (Khuzestan) go back to old Bedouin dialects dating back to the 13th century C.E.

(C): The Sinai dialect which, according to (de Jong, 2000), is related to the dialect of Negev, north-eastern Egyptian and Ḥijāz dialects.

28

(E): The Western Bedouin dialects in North Africa including Libya, Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco that are introduced through the Bedouin tribes migration, such as Bani Sulayman, Bani ʕUqayl, and Bani Hilāl, from the Arabian Peninsula from the 9th century.

(F): The Bedouin dialects found in sub-Saḥāran regions as in Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, and Mauritania as a result of migrations from Arabic-speaking areas in the last 300 years.

In what follows, I will give the main characteristics that Bedouin dialects are most likely share. The CA *q is articulated as the voiced stop /g/ or the affricate /j/. [q] may be produced, in some dialects, as an allophonic variant of /ġ/. The affricate [č] may be produced as a reflex or variant of *k. Unlike many sedentary dialects, the Bedouin dialects retain the interdentals /ṯ/, /ḏ/, and /ḏ_{̣/. In addition to the usual emphatic stops and fricatives, new emphatics may} appear, such as: /ṛ/, /ẉ/, /ḅ/, /ḷ/ and /ṃ/.

Bedouin dialects generally exhibit three short vowels, /a/, /i/, and /u/, and three long vowels, /ā/, /ī/, and /ū/. In addition, two new short vowels /e/, and /o/ and their long counterparts /ē/ and /ō/ are attested in some Eastern and some Western dialects. However, vowel length is not phonemic in some Western dialects with vastly reduced vowel inventories.

The basic syllable patterns in Bedouin dialects are CV, CVV, CVC, CVVC, CVCC, and CCV(C). According to Rosenhouse (2006), they are similar to the syllable types found in Eastern sedentary dialects, and differ from those of North African sedentary dialects. Eastern and Western Bedouin dialects have the same rules of stress assignment, but they differ from sedentary dialects. In general, stress assignment depends on syllable weight. For example, word-final superheavy syllables (CVVC and CVCC) receive stress. However, Western and Eastern Bedouin dialects vary as to the stressing of word-final CVC syllables. In many Bedouin dialects, the definite article counts in stress assignment, and enclitics and verb prefixes receive stress when they are followed by a short syllable (ibid).

One typical feature of Bedouin dialects is the gahawah syndrome, which involves the insertion of [a] in a cluster ... aGC... where (G = gutturals x, ġ, ḥ, ʕ, ʔ, h). The typical example is

gahwah ‘coffee’ > gahawah. Some Bedouin dialects not only insert such vowel but also delete

the first vowel resulting in a consonant cluster word-initially, as in: gahwah > gahawah >

29

Raising of /a/ is found in Bedouin dialects word internally ([i] adjacent to front consonants and [u] adjacent to back consonants). By contrast, vowel raising word-finally, such as in the case of the nominal feminine ending, is attested in Eastern sedentary dialects. With regard to morphophonological structures, unstressed high short vowels are deleted when morphemes are suffixed to the stem.

Bedouin dialects have a set of independent and bound pronouns which distinguish gender in both singular and plural forms. Eastern Bedouin dialects have the typical single form of the relative pronoun (ʔ)alli, and Western Bedouin dialects also have eddi (Rosenhouse, 2006). Bedouin dialects use diminutives more frequently than sedentary dialects do (ibid). In terms of verbal morphology, verbs in Bedouin dialects inflect for three persons, two numbers, and two genders, exhibiting gender distinction in 2p. and 3p. The verbal prefixes in most Bedouin dialects are similar to those of CA in using /a/ instead of /i/, as in: yafham ‘he understands’. They also use several suffixes with the imperfect forms, for example, -i, -īn, and -iy are different suffix forms denoting the 2f.s. in different Bedouin dialects. The deletion of the final vowel in the verb Form IIIw/y of imperative is a typical feature in Eastern Bedouin dialects, as

in: imš ~ imiš ‘go 2m.s.!’.

There are several basic lexemes shared by many Bedouin groups, including: xašm ‘nose’,

barāṭim ‘lips’, bil ‘camels’, ʔajawīd ‘fine men’, gōm ‘tribe’, ḏ̣ʕūf ‘children’, šēn ‘bad’, rḥamān

‘merciful’, gōṭar ‘go’, bāčir ~ bākir ‘tomorrow’ and mint ‘you m.s. are not’.

Bedouin Arabic has influenced sedentary dialects as a result of continuous contact between the speakers of the two groups. This can be clearly shown through the mixed urban dialects that exhibit features from the speech of both of the groups (Miller, 2004: 183). Rosenhouse (1984: 168-9) found similarities between the Bedouin dialects of the north Israel and Lebanese dialects of the coastal regions such as Sidon and Tyre; Owens’ (1984) work on Eastern Libyan Arabic shows the effect of Bedouinization in the region such as the /g/ reflex of CA *q, which is a feature of Bedouin speech. Another example is the interdentals; while the Levantine and Egyptian sedentary dialects do not usually have the interdentals /ṯ/ and /ḏ/, most Bedouin dialects have three interdentals namely /ṯ/, /ḏ/, and /ḏ_{̣/ (de Jong, 2004: 155). However, some} urban dialects in Libya (Owens, 1984: 7) use /ṯ/ and /ḏ/, suggesting Bedouin influence on sedentary Arabic dialects. Shiʕite in Bahrain and the Gulf, who are sedentary, use some Sunni Arabic, which is Bedouin, for example, Sunni /y/ which is a reflex of CA *j, occurs in the speech of Shiʕite, as in: jadīd ‘new’ > yadīd (Johnstone, 1967: 20). After the arrival of the

30

Bedouin to Baghdad and central Iraq in 18th and 19th centuries, Bedouin speech, referred to by Ingham (1982) in this area as Mesopotamian, began to be the dominant variety (Miller, 2004: 183). Finally, many lexical terms of Bedouin dialects are found in the sedentary dialects; Abu- Haidar (2006: 270) points out that the Bedouin loanwords were attested in Christian sedentary dialect spoken by the inhabitants of two towns in Mount Lebanon.

Finally, nabaṭī poetry is another example of the influence of Bedouin dialects on sedentary dialects. It is known as free/foot poetry which is composed from the Bedouin everyday language, and is written as it is spoken (As-Saʕīd, 1987: 14), No matter who composes this poetry (sedentary or Bedouin), most of the lexical entries are clearly of Bedouin origin. Most Arabic speaking people are proud of Bedouin culture; this can be seen from the citation of words, sentences, proverbs, and verses of Bedouin Arabic in everyday speech. Stylistically speaking, it is stated that ‘the language of the prose tends, to some extent, to take the nomadic dialect as a model’ (Palva, 1970: 19).