Yemeni Arabic: A NewReference
This is the second book by Hamdi Qafisheh onYemeni Arabic. The first, Yemeni Arabic I, was published byLibrairie du Liban in 1990. Both books are disappointing, althoughthe one under review, Yemeni Arabic Reference Grammar,contains less errors than Yemeni Arabic I.
Yemeni Arabic Reference Grammar(henceforth YARG) provides an outline of the phonology,morphology and syntax of San'ani Arabic (SA) as spoken bysemi-educated and unsophisticated male speakers. The book comprisesfive parts: an introduction, phonology, morphology, syntax, andtexts with translations. The phonology part describes theconsonants, the vowels, sound combinations, major sound changes andword stress. The morphology part describes the derivation of verbs,verbal inflection, the future, the derivation of nouns, nominalinflections, modification of nouns &emdash; i.e., constructionphrases, definiteness, participles and adjectives, pronouns, andparticles. The syntax part describes major sentence types, clauses,major phrase types, verb phrases, concord, and negation. The lastsection comprises seven translated texts. The book concludes with abibliography.
YARG is very disappointing and would bedifficult to use on a number of points. These points can be roughlydivided into editorial weaknesses (including layout, transcription,repetition, lack of explanation) and substantive weaknesses. I shalldeal with the editorial weaknesses first.
Many of the terms used, particularly in thephonology section (part one), are too technical for the averagelanguage learner: terms which are not explained include 'allophone'(p. 1), 'intervocalically' (p. 2), 'aspirated' and 'unaspirated' (p.2). Some of the instructions would be impossible to accomplish byall but the most competent of articulary phoneticians. For example,on p. 9 the reader is told to "narrow the pharynx by moving the rootof the tongue back, and raising the larynx," while on p. 8 we aretold that "in producing /x/ the back of the tongue must come near theuvula: for /h [with a dot under]/ the tongue must notapproach it." Secondly, the author is very inconsistent in his useof terms: t [with a dot under] is described as bothvelarised and pharyngealised on p. 2, but "the allophone [d --with a dot under--] is semi-pharyngealized" on p. 3. Velarisation and pharyngealisation then continue to be interchangedin the discussion of other emphatics &emdash; on p. 34 we are toldthat "velarization is not limited only to pharyngealized sound ...". Thirdly, where terms are described they are sometimes not describedon their first occurence: thus velarisation is described on p. 6,but not on p. 2 where it first occurs. Fourthly, the layout is poor: the examples are given in plain type while the translations aregiven in italics. It would be far easier to read if the examples ofYemeni Arabic only were given in italics. The footnotes are notfootnotes but are given as endnotes at the end of each section. Thismakes them difficult to locate. They would be better either asendnotes at the end of the book in one section, or as true footnotes. The transcription system is rather rough and ready in an age whencomputers and word-processing packages enable people to produce theirown diacritics within hours, and many fonts can be purchased readymade for different word processors. Fifthly, there are a number ofcontradictions in the book &emdash; for example, "it was mentioned in2. VOWELS that /ee/ occurs only in the word final sequence /ee?/...",but "bride" is translated as hareeweh on p. 136 and elsewhere(hareewah on p. 28); "and not" is given as wa laa onpp. 271-72, but as wala on p. 273. Finally, under editorialweaknesses, the number of typographical errors is legion: forexample, mammad for mhammad (p. 28), "vowell" for"vowel" (p. 15), ii/ for /ii/ (p. 16), bidawirfor biddawwir (p. 31), yiuhkk for yihukk [with a dot underthe h] (p. 82), "tu-" for "/tu-/" (p. 65),"StaCaaC" for "staCaaC" (p. 63), habs is given for habs [with adot under the h] (p.35), 19-35 for 19-25 (p. 132), ?ashtailis given for ?ashtaghil (p. 258), 8-10 is given for 9-10(p. 242), and "nominal" for "prepositional" (p. 242), "don't",doesn't" and isn't" are all given without the apostrophe on p. 273,'alayh is given as 'alyh (p. 262), yistantug[with a dot under the t] "to interrogate (p. 73) is given as'stantig [with a dot under the t] "interrogate?" (p.74) and yistantag [with a dot under the t] (p. 271),'utus [with a dot under the t] (p. 44) is given as'atas [with a dot under the t] (p. 60), and on p. 129the broken plural pattern fu'uul with examples is repeatedfrom p. 123. A final technical point is the inadequateacknowledgement of secondary sources &emdash; Rossi, in particular,and also Jastrow (1984), whose discussion of the feminine endingQafisheh misinterprets on p. iii.
The main substantive weaknesses of the bookoccur in Part One on the phonology. Table 2 gives a four-vowelsystem for San'ani Arabic: a,i,e,u. In itself a four-vowel systemis rather unstable (either a five-vowel or a three-vowel system wouldbe more stable), but from Qafisheh's transcriptions and discussion ofthe vowel sounds in San'ani Arabic it appears that e is, in fact, anallophone of either /a/ or /i/: the ta marbutah ending hegives as either -eh or -ah (p. 10 taageh[with a dot under the t] "window", hilbeh[with a dot under the h] "fenugreek", sagtah [witha dot under the t] "epilepsy"), and on p. 16 /a/'s quality issaid to range "between the e in pen and a in pan". On p. 36 underdiscussion of stress the syllable CVC is said to be a lightsyllable, though phonologists (notably J. McCarthy) describe CVCin Arabic (and many other languages) as heavy. Under thediscussion of epenthesis (p. 27), it is incorrectly said that noepenthesis occurs between a word ending in a doubled consonant and aword beginning with a single consonant (see Watson 1993:9-10). Underthe discussion on germination it is said that while "any doubleconsonant may appear in an intervocalic position -gg-[and] -dd- are rare" (p. 22). This is also incorrectsince hagg [with a dot under the h] "of; amounting to;belonging to" is a very common word in the dialect, and examples of-dd- are many &emdash; in baddal "to change",ad-dihlîz "the hall", jaddî "mygrandfather", haddâd [with a dot under the h]"blacksmith", m'addab "well-mannered", ad-daktûr"the doctor", etc. The author tells us that pausaldipthongisation is "unique" to San'ani Arabic (p. 31), however, it isalso found in dialects spoken outside Sanaa. Other dialects ofYemeni Arabic exhibit pausal dipthongisation, though suchdipthongisation usually differs from the -u > ow/aw and -i >ey/ay dipthongisation in the central plateau (for example, pausalnasalisation of î or î and û in certain dialectsof the Tihama and the western mountain range (Behnstedt 1985:57, Diem1973:78) can be analysed as a type of dipthongisation. Jastrow alsonoted slight dipthongisation of final high vowels in the dialect ofYarîm (Fischer and Jastrow 1980:111).
The morphology part of the book does havesome interesting points. In section six on the discussion of soundverbs the author says that "verbs of the fu'ul type usuallyhave a velarized consonant" (p. 44), though the interestingrelationship between emphatic consonants and the vowel u in thisdialect is not followed up. The author also points out that verbs ofthe fu'il type are unstable in SA. On the whole, though, PartTwo degenerates into lists of single-word examples with theirtranslations, again replete with errors, and with very littleexplanatory or analytical text. The morphology and syntax partscontain substantially nothing that is not mentioned in Rossi (1939),and in very many cases what has been said by Rossi has beeninaccurately reanalysed &emdash; or just badly copied &emdash; byQafisheh. In places it seems fairly clear that examples have notbeen taken from real text: consider the improbable verb strings ofkaan saar [with a dot under the s] yisthîyhaawil [with a dot under the h] yibga yi'mal "hewould have been able to try to keep on working"(p. 262), and kaansaar [with a dot under the s] yigdar yhaawil[with a dot under the h] yibga yi'mal "he wouldhave been able to try to go to work", and laazim 'alayh (ykuun)saar [with a dot under the s] yigra? "he must have gone to study" (p. 264) and (kaan) laazim 'alayhysiir(yigra?) "he had to go to study." There are alsounexplained inconsistencies in this part: we are told that "theperfect [of yishtî]/(?i)shta is rarely used inSA; /kaan yishtî/ is very commonly used" (p. 220, note24), yet on p. 129 we are presented with seven examples of shtabefore one or two imperfect verbs with no explanation of whyshta can be used in the perfect in these cases. From myfieldwork the perfect of yishtî can be used, but tendsto be used in conditional or conditional-like structures, as inayyahîn-ma [with a dot under the h] shta"whenever he wants" and ka-ma shtaytî "as you f.s.like."
At times I find it rather difficult to seewhy the book was produced at all since it has apparently very littleprimary source material in it and offers no coherent theoreticalanalysis. The sample texts section at the end of the book is barelyusable. It contains 75 proverbs with following translations,presumably taken from one of the many proverb books in San'aniArabic, followed by seven sets of texts. Of these, texts VI and VIIappear to have been taken from Rossi (without acknowledgement) andinclude many errors and hyperconnections inserted by the author. Theremaining texts II-V appear to have been constructed from real text,but contain many improbable phonological and syntactical structures. To cite two examples, word-initial hamza intervocalically, asin gad ana ?ashti ?agdif [with a line under the d] "Icould throw up" and gad-li shahrayn wa ?ana ?atlubak... [with a dot under the t] "I have been asking you to... for two months," (p. 294) and three entrance halls is incorrectlygiven as thalaathat madaaxil (p. 298) with the number takingt.
I found the book tedious and annoying. Thenumber of typographical errors often means that it is impossible forthe reader to decide between a typographical and a substantive error. The number of substantive errors makes the book practically unusablefor anyone attempting to learn Yemeni Arabic, or for comparativedialectologists working on Arabic. The fact that the book fails toadopt a coherent theoretical approach to the analysis of either thephonology, morphology or the syntax reduces its value stillmore.
Behnstedt, P. (1985) DieNordjemenitischen Dialekte. Vol. 1. Atlas. Wiesbaden.
Diem, W. (1973) Skizzen JemenitischerDialekte. Beirut.
Fischer, W. and O. Jastrow (1980) Handbuch Arabischer Dialekte. Wiesbaden.
Jastrow, O. (1984) "Zur Phonologie undPhonetik des San'ânischen," in H. Kopp and G. Scweizer(editors), Jemen-Studien. Vol. 1:289-302, Wiesbaden.
Rossi, E. (1939) L'Arabo Parlato aSan'a. Rome.
Qafisheh, H. (1990) Yemeni Arabic I. Beirut.
Watson, J. C. E. (1993) A Syntax ofSan'ani Arabic. Wiesbaden.
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