Aspects Of The Phonology And Morphology Of Saudi Varieties Of Arabic
Authors: Davis Stuart , Alshammari Wafi , Alahmari Musa , Alhuwaykim Mamdouh 
Published: October 2024

This article will bring together detailed description of various morphological, morpho-phonological, and phonological phenomena witnessed in different Peninsular varieties of Arabic. Some of the phenomena to be discussed are known, but perhaps the specific details are less known. After presenting general background and some of the unusual characteristics found in Peninsular varieties of Arabic, we focus on three specific phenomena in Saudi Arabic varieties: a productive morphological augmentative witnessed in Ha’ili (northern Najdi) Arabic, the realization of the 2nd person singular possessive pronoun focusing on a southwestern Arabian variety, and a detailed account of word-final degemination and vowel shortening in an Arabic variety spoken in Sakaka City.

Virtually unknown to most Arabic scholars is an unusual productive morphological augmentative witnessed in Ha’ili Arabic (Alashammari & Davis 2019) that includes forms like [klɑɑb] ‘dog (augmentative)’ for [kalb] ‘dog’ (where bold indicates pharyngealization), [šwɑɑʿir] ‘poet (augmentative)’ for [šaaʿir] ‘poet’, and [srɑɑwiil] ‘pants (augmentative)’ for [sirwaal] ‘pants’. This pattern will be described in detail, focusing on its morphophonological realization. An important analytical question that will be addressed is whether these augmentatives are based on the noun forms shown or on the corresponding dialectal diminutives: [klejb], [šwejʿir], and [srejwiil], respectively. The second phenomenon to be described and analyzed concerns the realization of the 2nd person singular possessive suffix. In various Peninsular dialects, the masculine possessive suffix will alternate between [-k], [-ka], and [-ak]. Focusing on a southwestern Saudi variety (Alahmari 2018), this allomorphy is exemplified by examples such as [kutub-k] ‘your books’ [malik-ka] ‘your king’ and [baab-ak] ‘your door’. We will present a detailed descriptive analysis of the pattern arguing that /-k/ is the underlying form of the suffix and then briefly compare its realization with other Arabic varieties and examining the feminine form of the suffix. A final phenomenon to be discussed that appears to be fairly widespread among Najdi and northwestern Saudi Arabic varieties is final degemination (and stress shift) in bisyllabic words that end in an underlying geminate as illustrated by the difference between [ḥagg] ‘a truth’ and [ʾíl-ḥag] ‘the truth’ with stress on the definite article or in the elative [ʾáxaf] ‘lighter’ with initial stress where most dialects have [ʾaxáff]. Focusing on a dialect spoken in Sakaka City (Alhuwaykim 2018), the details of the degemination pattern are presented and analyzed including the lack of degemination (and stress shift) in derived contexts (e.g. [sikát-t] ‘I fell silent’). Further, the Sakaka City dialect pattern is somewhat different from Ingham’s (2008) observation of definite article stressing in Najdi Arabic as witnessed in such forms as [ʾál-walad] ‘the boy’, which would not have retracted stress in the dialect under consideration. Also, we will analytically unify degemination with the occurrence of word-final vowel shortening (and stress shift) in bisyllabic words as illustrated by the difference between [jaa] ‘he came’ and [máa-ja] ‘he did not come’. The shortening only occurs when the vowel is in absolute word-final position as seen from examples like [biʿíid] ‘distant’ and [ʾil-ʿáam] ‘the (last) year’ where no shortening occurs. We conclude by discussing the question concerning to what extent the phenomena presented here reflect ancient features, be it substrate or older forms of Arabic, or just reflect Arabic-internal developments.