Morpho-phonological Inadequacies in Af’al-Based Early Arabic Varieties

Abstract

The Arabic dialectological tradition has always been vast and diverse as to the many studies, investigations, and scholarships seeking to interpret various phonological, morphological, and linguistic phenomenon. Traditionally, variation in Standard Arabic, particularly the different inter-tribal, territorial, and local dialects and accents, has proved to be challenging for linguists, lexicographers, and philologists. In this respect, linguistic bibliographies authored on this issue have reported that some traditional accounts labelled these varieties as substandard, colloquial, and vulgar. Scholarly works on such issues have long disagreed on what norms to follow in standardizing varieties. This paper, accordingly, is a gap-filler for this problematic issue. To this end, a set of paradigmatic realizations based on the Arabic morphemic root a-f-’-a-l (after the verb fe’ele, to do) have been sampled for analysis; eight paradigmatic realizations have been identified. The analysis finds that substandard variations in certain Arabic varieties has largely been triggered by the registers, jargons, and contexts where the various forms are used.