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Part of
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXXIII: Papers selected from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Toronto, Canada, 2019
Edited by Abdel-Khalig Ali and Atiqa Hachimi
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 11] 2022
► pp. 3–26

Palestinian Arabic in the diaspora

Assessing the case for contact-induced change

| University of Ottawa
| University of Ottawa

Using a comparative sociolinguistic framework, the present investigation addresses contact between Palestinian and Lebanese Arabic in Beirut. The investigation targets the variable raising of /a:/ to [e:] in word-medial position, claimed to be a stereotypical feature of Lebanese Arabic, which is reportedly infiltrating the Palestinian Arabic spoken by the local refugee population. Incorporating extra-linguistic parameters of contact into the investigation as well as an apparent-time component as a check on linguistic change, the study compares Lebanese and Palestinian speech data to determine the extent to which the linguistic conditioning of the target variable in Lebanese Arabic is replicated by speakers of Palestinian Arabic. Results suggest that the variable use of word-medial raised [e:] in Palestinian Arabic is the product of contact with the majority Lebanese variety and that this development can be characterized as an off-the-shelf change insofar as it is relatively accessible to those speakers who adopt it.

Keywords: Palestinian Arabic, Lebanese Arabic, variable vowel raising, dialect contact, comparative sociolinguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research on variable vowel raising in Arabic
  • 3.The data
  • 4.Theoretical framework
  • 5.Methods
    • 5.1Defining the envelope of variation
    • 5.2Social constraints
    • 5.3Linguistic constraints
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1The social dynamics of vowel raising in Beirut
    • 6.2Multivariate analysis
  • 7.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 December 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.11.01abo
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