Edited by Samira Farwaneh and Hamid Ouali
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 1] 2014
► pp. 91–118
Linguists have observed a morpheme /-in(n)-/ which occurs in certain dialects of Arabic from Nigeria to Uzbekistan. The development of this feature may be one key toward understanding internal language development processes on one hand, and morphological borrowing due to language contact on the other. The aim of this paper is to classify the functions of this morpheme and its homomorphs as they appear in the folktales collected by the linguist G. Tsereteli and the ethnographer I. Vinnikov between the years 1935 and 1940, narrated by Arabs of the Bukhara region of Uzbekistan, and analyze them against the theories of development of the /-in(n)-/ morpheme as it appears more broadly across the Arabic dialects. The analysis is in relation to the claims of Uzbek Turkic influence and Tajik Persian influence in a search for consistency.