The future markers in Palestinian Arabic:
Internal or external motivation for language
change?
The main objective of this research is to
explore the factors involved in the variable formation of the future
in Palestinian Arabic (PA), and to examine whether it represents a
case of ongoing grammatical change. The results show that
middle-aged and younger Jaffan and Gazan speakers living in Gaza
express future time reference in ways that are absent in the Jaffan
dialect still spoken in Jaffa and are also not characteristic of the
speech of older Jaffan and Gazan speakers in Gaza. Middle-aged and
younger Gazans and Jaffans living in Gaza primarily express ‘future’
within the verbal paradigm by means of a prefix ḥa-
attached to the non-past stem. The study concludes that both
internal and external factors are involved in the development of the
future marker in PA.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background information
- 2.1The Arabic language
- 2.2Socio-historical, linguistic, and demographic situation in
the Gaza City context
- 2.3Morphology of the Arabic verb
- 3.Contact and language change
- 3.1The code-copying framework and the dialect contact situation
in Gaza City
- 4.Study design
- 4.1Recruiting participants, interview, data collection
- 5.Findings: Future time reference within and outside the verbal paradigm
in PA
- 6.Dialect contact and language change in PA
- 6.1Development of Future markers in PA
- Stage I: Grammaticalization of the lexical verb
ra:ḥ into a grammatical
particle
- Stage II: Copying and conventionalization of
ra:ḥ into the Gazan dialect
- Stage III: Further grammaticalization of the particle
ra:ḥ into the prefix
ḥa-
- 6.2Discussion
- 6.3Extra-linguistic factors
- 6.3.1Role of the individual speaker
- 6.3.2Social asymmetry and dominance relations
- 7.Conclusion
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Notes
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Abbreviations
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References