"Influences of Aramaic on dialectal Arabic", in: Archaism and Innovation in the Semitic Languages. Selected papers

Archaism and Innovation in the Semitic Languages Selected Papers Edited by Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala & Wilfred G. E. Watson CNERU – DTR __________________________________ Oriens Academic  CNERU – DTR Series Semitica Antiqva 1 Chief Editors Wilfred G. E. Watson • Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala Advisory Board Riccardo Contini • Federico Corriente • Olga Kapeliuk Gregorio del Olmo • Andrzej Zaborski Archaism and Innovation in the Semitic Languages Selected Papers Edited by Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala & Wilfred G. E. Watson Archaism and Innovation in the Semitic Languages. Selected Papers. Edited by Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala & Wilfred G. E. Watson. – Cordoba : CNERU (Cordoba Near Eastern Research Unit) – DTR (Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University UK) – Oriens Academic, 2013 (Series Semitica Antiqva ; vol. 1) ISBN : 978-84-695-7829-2 Publisher: Oriens Academic – CNERU (University of Cordoba) – DTR (Durham University) Cordoba Near Eastern Research Unit Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Universidad de Córdoba Plaza Cardenal Salazar, 3 14071 – Córdoba, Spain http://www.uco.es/cneru infoccne@uco.es Printer: Imprentatecé, S.C.A. Ingeniero Torres Quevedo, s/n Córdoba (Spain) Cover design by Manuel Marcos Aldón & Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala ISBN: 978-84-695-7829-2 DL: CO-906-2013 © Cordoba Near Eastern Research Unit © The authors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in any retrieval system, nor transmitted in any form without written permission from the Publisher Printed in Spain  CONTENTS Preface ........................................................................................... vii BULAKH, Maria The diachronic background of the verbs wīda and ġerōb ‘to know’ in Mehri ..................................................................................................... 1 CORRIENTE, Federico Again on the classification of South-Semitic ................................................ 33 KALININ, Maksim & Sergey LOESOV Encoding of the Direct Object throughout the History of Aramaic (Part 1) ................................................................................................. 45 KAPELIUK, Olga Innovation within Archaism in Modern Ethio-Semitic .................................. 59 MARTÍNEZ DELGADO, José On the phonology of Hebrew in Alandalus as reflected by the adaptation of Arabic grammar and poetry ................................................... 73 MILITAREV, Alexander The importance of external lexical comparison for today’s comparative Semitics and the main problems and immediate tasks of Afrasian comparative linguistics ............................................................... 87 MONFERRER-SALA, Juan Pedro A king amongst kings: On the term mlk in the context of the North Arabian Aramaic inscriptions .................................................................... 93 OLMO LETE, Gregorio del The Linguistic Continuum of Syria-Palestine in the Late II Millennium BC. Retention and Innovation ............................................... 113 RÍO SÁNCHEZ, Francisco del Influences of Aramaic on dialectal Arabic ................................................. 129 TAKÁCS, Gábor Archaisms and innovations in the Semitic consonantal inventory .................. 137 VERNET, Eulalia New considerations on the historical existence of a West Semitic ‘yaqattal’ form ..................................................................................... 145 WATSON, Wilfred G. E. Indo-European and Semitic: Two-way Traffic ........................................... 163 ZABORSKI, Andrzej Towards a reconstruction of verbal derivation in Afroasiatic/ Hamitosemitic: R3/D3 or iqtalla Class .................................................... 195  Influences of Aramaic on dialectal Arabic Francisco del Río Sánchez University of Barcelona The predominant tradition in the Spanish academic environment is to link the Aramaic language to biblical philology, understanding this language as a simple tool at the service of Hebrew. As a consequence, many philologists are limited to studying the Jewish-Aramaic dialects and overlook the existence of other variants not connected with the Jewish or the biblical word. On the other hand, the majority of the Spanish scholars devoted to the study of Arabic (with a few exceptions) usually have tended to avoid any study of Hebrew or Aramaic due to different inherited reasons. Fortunately, these two faults in the field of Semitics in our country have been overcome thanks to the new generations of scholars and students. In the case of the University of Barcelona, a new phenomenon can be seen over the last few years, in particular, an interest manifested by students of Arabic in learning different Aramaic dialects (specially Biblical Aramaic, Syriac and epigraphic dialects of the Hellenistic and Roman period) because they are convinced that this knowledge is useful in trying to nature of the Arabic language. In this context, a very frequent reaction of these students is to identify in the Aramaic language the linguistic phenomena present in Arabic, and conclude that Aramaic is “like an Arabic dialect”. The discovery of this typological similarity between Aramaic in general and dialectal Arabic is inspirational for our students and researchers but also makes it very difficult to recognize real borrowings; as a precautionary measure, the influence of Aramaic should not be overemphasized: frequently, the so-called “aramaisms” of Arabic can be interpreted as parallel developments.1 Anyway, this fact opens an interesting field of work in comparative Semitics because it serves to locate postulated developments in two languages “genetically” connected that find identical solutions for similar problems.2 * Project I+D n. FFI2011-25460/FILO. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spain). 1 Joshua Blau, ‘The influence of living Aramaic on ancient South Palestinian Christian Arabic’, in J. Blau, Studies in Middle Arabic and its Judaeo-Arabic Variety, Jerusalem: Magnes Press-Hebrew University 1988, p. 288. 2 Jonathan Owens, ‘Indeterminance and comparative method: Arabic as a model for understanding the history of Aramaic’, in Arabic Dialectology: In honour of Clive Holes on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, eds Enam Al-Wer & Rudolf de Jong, Leiden-Boston: Brill  Francisco del Río Sánchez The debate about the influence of Aramaic on classical and dialectal Arabic can be considered a classical topic in the field of Semitic Linguistics.3 This debate is based on the fact that a close rapport certainly existed between both languages in the Syro-Mesopotamian area from the First Millenium b. C. E., which developed into a prolonged situation of real bilingualism during the First and Second Millenium a. C. E. We should remember here that classical theory about the emergence of nabaṭī Neo-Arabic, which advocates the existence of a common commercial ḥaḍarī spoken Arabic which emerged before Islam and probably was the product of linguistic contact between Arab tribes and Aramaean populations; this commercial koine (obviously influenced by Aramaic) would become the forerunner of current spoken varieties.4 Lexicon Starting from this premise, the lexicographical perspective has become the most comfortable field of work for “hunters” of Aramaic influences on Arabic due to the amount of possible parallelisms between these two languages. At least from the work of Fränkel during the 19th Century5, there is a proliferation of studies especially focused on the exploration of the Qur’anic Aramaic lexicon. For example, the Foreign Vocabulary of Qur’ān of Jeffery and the work of Mingana which became an inspiration for later studies like the controversial work of Luxenberg.6 The well-known work of Ignatios Ephrem Barsaum on Syriac borrowings in Classical Arabic7 should be read in this context. The methodology used to identify the Aramaic origin of these words frequently limits itself to 2009, p. 3. See also, J. Blau, ‘On some Arabic dialectal features paralleled by Hebrew and Aramaic’, Jewish Quaterly Review 76:1 (1985), pp. 5-6. 3 Stefan Weninger, ‘Aramaic-Arabic Language Contact’, in The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, ed. S. Weninger, Berlin-Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2011, p. 748. 4 Federico Corriente, ‘From Old Arabic to Classical Arabic through the Islamic koine: Some notes on the native grammarians’ sources, attitudes and Goals’, Journal of Semitic Studies 21:1-2 (1976), pp. 75, 87-89. 5 Siegmund. Fränkel, Die aramäischen Fremdworter im Arabischen, Leiden: Brill, 1886. 6 Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of Qur’an, Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938; Alphonse Mingana, ‘Syriac Influences On The Style Of The Kurʼān”, Bulletin of The John Rylands Library 2 (1927), pp. 77–98; Christoph Luxenberg, Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Koransprache, Berlin: Das arabische Buch, 2000 (in English: Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran, Berlin: Hans Schiler, 2007). Luxenberg claims that the Qur’ān is a transformation of a text written originally in Syriac. 7 Ignatios Ephrem Barsaum, al-Alfāẓ al-suryāniyya fī ma‘āǧim al-‘arabiyya, Damascus: The Arab Academy of Damascus, 1951. 130  Influences of Aramaic on dialectal Arabic checking that they do not have any semantic cognates in the Arabic roots from which they could have been derived.8 The main characteristic of Qur’anic and fuṣḥa Aramaic loanwords is that this collection of Aramaic vocabulary (containing mostly religious terminology but also words about daily life) has been transformed and fully integrated into the phonetic and syllabic structure of the ‘Arabiyya.9 In the specific case of Arabic dialects, the presence of Aramaic loanwords in the Levantine, Anatolian and Mesopotamian Arabic lexicon is an accepted fact,10 and has been traditionally explored in particular among native Christian scholars.11 The etymological dictionaries of local dialects elaborated by Muslim researchers also have information about the Aramaic origins of some words.12 It 8 A well-known group of candidates to be Aramaic loanwords are the masculine (!) words ending with –ūt in ‘Arabiyya. Most of them are abstract nouns: ‫“ ملكوت‬kingdom”, ‫عظموت‬ “greatness”, ‫“ رهبوت‬anguish”, ‫“ رمحوت‬mercy”, ‫“ كهنوت‬priesthood”, ‫“ جربوت‬omnipotence”, ‫انسوت‬ “humanity”, ‫“ الهوت‬theology”; at least one is a maṣdar, ‫“ رغبوت‬entreaty” (an Ethiopic ending?), but there are also adjectives like ‫“ خلبوت‬alluring”, and common substantives like ‫“ عنكبوت‬spider” or ‫“ حيّوت‬male of the viper”. See William Wright, A Grammar of the Arabic Language, Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1896-1898, p. 166 §268 A/Rem. 9 A good summary of the lexical borrowings in Aramaic can be found in Jan Retsö, ‘Aramaic/Syriac Loanwords’, in Encyclopaedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, ed. Kees Versteegh, Leiden-Boston: Brill, I, pp. 178-182. 10 S. Weninger, ‘Aramaic-Arabic Language Contact’, in The Semitic Languages, ed. S. Weninger, pp. 747-755; K. Versteegh, ‘Linguistic Contacts between Arabic and other Languages’, Arabica 48:4 (2001), pp. 480-481. 11 (1) Libanese: Youssef Hobeyka, The influences of Syriac on the Lebanese and Syrian dialects, «Abrohom Nuro Library» 16, Piscataway: Gorgias Press 2011; Anis Frayha, Mu‘ǧam al-alfāẓ al-‘āmmiyya, Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1973; Riccardo Contini, ‘Le substrat araméen en neo-libanais: Préliminaires à une enquête sisthématique’, Afroasiatica Tergensia : Paper from the 9th Italian Meeting of Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) Linguistics. Trieste 23-24 April 1998, eds Marcelo Lamberti & Livia Tonelli, Padova: Unipress, 1999, pp. 101-128. (2) Antilebanon- Qalamūn: Werner Arnold & Peter Behnstedt, Arabisch-aramaische Sprachbeziehungen im Qalamun (Syrien). Eine dialektgeographische Untersuchung mit einer wirtschafts- und sozialgeographischen Einführung von Anton Escher, Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1993. (3) Anatolia: Otto Jastrow, ‘Aramäische Lehnwörter in den arabischen Dialekten der Südost-Türkei’, Akten des 27. Deutschen Orientalistentages, eds Stefan Wild & Hartmut Schild, Würzburg: Ergon, 2001, pp. 615-621; O. Jastrow, ‘Aramäische Lehnwörter im arabischen Dialekt von Kinderib (Südost-Türkei)’, Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí 8 [Homenaje a Peter Behnstedt en su 60 aniversario/ Festschrift für Peter Behnstedt zum 60. Geburtstag] (2004), pp. 99- 103. (4) Dialect of Aleppo: Barsum Ayyub, al-Uṣūl al-suryāniyya fī asmāʼ al-mudun wa-l-qurā al- sūriyya wa-šarḥ ma‘ānihā, Aleppo: Mardin Publ. House, 2000; Ğirğis Šalḥat, Luġat Ḥalab al- suryāniyya, Aleppo: Imprimerie Maronite, s.d. (5) Dialect of Mosul: Dawud al-Ğalabi, al- Athār al-arāmiyya fī luġat al-Mawṣil al-‘arabiyya, Mosul: The Chaldean Star, 1935. 12 For example and in the case of Aleppo: Muhammad Khayr al-Dīn al-Asadī, Mawsū’at Ḥalab al-muqārana, 7 vol., Aleppo: Aleppo University Press 1981-1988; Marwan al-Rifā‘ī, Aṣl al-laqš al-ḥalabī, Aleppo: Ray, 2005, pp. 25-104. 131  Francisco del Río Sánchez is important to stress that this research is not as simple as has sometimes been assumed and, in fact, as yet no systematic investigation has been carried out. There are some questions that should be taken into account by the scholar who wants to investigate the borrowing from Aramaic to Arabic: 1) the dialectal diversity of Aramaic present in the Arabic loanwords or, in other words, what kind of Aramaic the borrowing reflects, 2) the date of these borrowings and, 3) the semantic fields of the borrowings. For example, the usual assumption is that Syriac (an eastern literary dialect) is the main source of borrowing; but the loanwords present in the Arabic dialects must have come from the spoken Aramaic of the surrounding environment.13 The main characteristic of the Aramaic words present in Arabic dialects, by contrast with the ‘Arabiyya, is the normal preservation of the Aramaic phonetic system of the loanwords (for example, nāṭūr “guardian” or šlaḥ “to undress”).14 In many cases, this has led to the introduction of new phonemes, like the velar stop voiced of Anatolian Arabic in words like magzūn “scythe” (Aram. ‫ܡܓܙܘܢܐ‬ magzūnā, Turoyo magzūnō).15 The remains of Aramaic begadkefat could be traced to some words like ğaddef (“to blaspheme”) if a shift of /g/ in initial position (Syriac ‫ ܓܕܦ‬gaddef) is assumed. In some specific cases, the gender of the Arabic word may have been influenced by the Aramaic.16 In the literature on Arabic dialects, there are many assertions of the recognized influence of an Aramaic substratum (or even adstratum in some cases) in the aforementioned varieties of Dialectal Arabic that is still present in the phonology and morphology.17 Yet no monographs have been devoted to this topic.18 In fact, there are not many incursions in these linguistic aspects, and the 13 Jan Retsö, ‘Aramaic/Syriac Loanwords’, in Encyclopaedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, ed. K. Versteegh, I, pp. 179-181; Peter Behnstedt, ‘Arabe Levantino’, in Manual de Dialectología Neoárabe, eds Federico Corriente & Ángeles Vicente, Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y de Oriente Próximo, 2008, p. 175. 14 The nouns of professions like nāṭūr, ṭārūq, gāṣūd (CāCūC) in Syrian Arabic have an Aramaic origin: P. Behnstedt, ‘Arabe Beduino’, in Manual de Dialectología Neoárabe, eds F. Corriente & A. Vicente, p. 78. 15 O. Jastrow, ‘Árabe de Anatolia’, in Manual de Dialectología Neoárabe, eds F. Corriente & A. Vicente, p. 215. 16 Jean Cantineau, Le Dialecte Arabe de Palmyre, 2 vol., Beirut: Institut Français de Damas, 1934, II, p. 36. 17 P. Behnstedt, ‘Arabe Levantino’, in Manual de Dialectología Neoárabe, eds F. Corriente & A. Vicente, p. 151. See also Preface, p. 41. 18 An exception can be the aforementioned work of W. Arnold & P. Behnstedt, Arabisch- aramaische Sprachbeziehungen im Qalamun (Syrien). Eine dialektgeographische Untersuchung mit einer wirtschafts- und sozialgeographischen Einführung von Anton Escher, Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1993. 132  Influences of Aramaic on dialectal Arabic phenomena usually described can be frequently explained using other reasons such as similar evolutionary behavior in both cases. In spite of this, the influence of Aramaic on phonology and morphosyntax of dialectal Arabic is the most important diagnostic instrument to determine the kind of contact between these two languages. We should remember here the assertion of Sara Thomason and Terrence Kaufman about the transference of phonological and morphosyntactic features: against the common opinion for a long time, the main characteristic of a substratal or adstratal influence is the transference of these patterns from the native language to the new one. In these cases, the lexicon of the old language is taken over by the new one except in the semantic domains in which the foreign language has no words, but in the process, the grammar of the adopted language is heavily affected.19 Phonology Below are some examples of possible phonological matches that may be due to an Aramaic substratum: Firstly, the most obvious and also the most quoted similarity is the tendency of Levantine Arabic (in urban environments) to merge originally non-emphatic voice and voiceless apico-interdental fricatives with dental stops (/θ/> /t/ – θalğ> talğ – and /δ/ > /d/ – δahab > dahab), a typical feature of Middle Aramaic phonol- ogy. The problem is that this merger also occurs in dialectal varieties that did not have contact with Aramaic, for example, Maltese, Moroccan or the urban dialect of Cairo.20 Secondly, there is the question of the emphatics, ejectives in Ethiopic and Modern South Arabian languages and “backed” and pharyngealised in many Arabic and Aramaic dialects, a realisation usually interpreted as secondary by many Semitists. The same treatment of these phonemes in both languages has allowed the suggestion of an originally Aramaic origin of this change. Thirdly, in the field of vocalism, Peter Behnstedt has suggested a relationship between the change /ā/>/ō/(/ē/) observed in Lebanese (and also present in some Anatolian dialects) with the pronunciation of the zəqāfā in Western Syriac, in particular in the cases non-conditioned by adjacent consonants (Lebanon: lisān > 19 Sara Grey Thomason & Terrence Kaufman, Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics, Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1988; K. Versteegh, ‘Linguistic Contacts between Arabic and other Languages’, Arabica 48:4 (2001), pp. 473-474. 20 S. Weninger, ‘Aramaic-Arabic Language Contact’, in The Semitic Languages, ed. S. Weninger, p. 748. The Cairene Arabic has a prestigious status in its country as well as in some Arab countries. 133  Francisco del Río Sánchez lsōn; Anti-Lebanon: fallōḥ – aram. fallōḥa –, Mardin: ḥikāya > ḥakōye).21 This dissotiation of /ā/>/ō/ (/ē/) is considered an internal evolution of Arabic by Henri Fleisch, who denies any influence of Aramaic in this phenomenon.22 Fourthly, the elision or shortening of pre-tonic vowels in an open syllable (/kabīr/> /kbir/), considered another “typical” Aramaic feature, is common in the areas with Aramaic substratum but also exists in other dialectal regions without this influence, like Mauritania or Morocco (in the latter case, probably due to the influence of Berber).23 In fact, this phenomenon is common in the vocalism of the Western dialects of Arabic. Morphology There are also some morphological similarities that can be attributed to the influence of Aramaic: Firstly, in the case of personal pronouns, an Aramaic substratum is noted in the case of the third person masc. pl. (hanne, hinnen, etc.)24 and the 2nd and 3rd masc. pl. bound pronouns (-kon, -ken, -hon, etc.) of many Levantine and Anatolian Arabic dialects.25 This relationship with Aramaic is discussed by Diem, who defends the unlikely possibility of an analogy with feminine pronouns26 which 21 W. Arnold & P. Behnstedt, Arabisch-aramaische Sprachbeziehungen im Qalamun, pp. 67-68; O. Jastrow, ‘Árabe de Anatolia’, in Manual de Dialectología Neoárabe, eds F. Corriente & A. Vicente, p. 228. P. Behnstedt, ‘Árabe Levantino’, in Manual de Dialectología Neoárabe, eds F. Corriente & A. Vicente, p. 156. 22 Henri Fleisch, Études d’Arabe Dialectal, Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1974. 23 Jordi Aguadé, ‘Árabe marroquí (Casablanca)’, in Manual de Dialectología Neoárabe, eds F. Corriente & A. Vicente, p. 303. Jan Retsö has suggested that some Arabic dialects of North Africa, being in fact descendants of dialects spoken in Syria and Arabia, share morphological and lexical features with Aramaic: J. Retsö, ‘kaškaša t-passives and the dialect geography of Ancient Arabia’, Oriente Moderno 19/80 (2000), pp. 111-118 24 It was suggested by Carl Brockelmann, Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen I: Laut- und Formenlehre, Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1908, p. 310. 25 For example, Damascene: -kon, -hon, Beduin dialect of Negev: –kuw, -kin, -hun, -hin, etc. Cf. Mark W. Cowell, A Reference Grammar of Syrian Arabic, Washington: Georgetown Univ. Press, 1964, pp. 167-170; P. Behnstedt, ‘Noch einmal zum Problem der Personalpronomina hanne (3 Pl.) –kon (2 Pl.) und –hon (3 Pl.) in der syrich-libanesischen Dialekten’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 141 (1991), pp. 235-252; Alan S. Kaye & Judith Rosenhouse, ‘Arabic Dialects and Maltese’, The Semitic Languages, ed. Robert Hetzron, London-New York: Rouledge, 1997, p. 287; O. Jastrow, ‘Árabe de Anatolia’, in Manual de Dialectología Neoárabe, eds F. Corriente & A. Vicente, p. 220. 26 Werner Diem, ‘Zum Problem der Personalpronomina hǝnne (3.pl.), -kon (2.pl.) und –hon (3.pl.) in den syrisch-libanesischen Dialekten’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 121 (1971), pp. 223-230. 134  Influences of Aramaic on dialectal Arabic are also found in other dialects without direct Aramaic substratum, as in the case of Yemenite.27 Secondly, the presence of some particles in determined dialects is also attributed to the Aramaic influence. The most significant examples are: a) the use of the particle of existence aku (negative māku) in Iraqi Arabic, which may be a remnant of the particle ’k’ of Aramaic Babylonian dialects28, and b) the analytical possessive particle dīl(a)/dēl(a) in Mardin and Dyarbekir dialects (lit. “which to, what he has”) may be a calque of Syriac ‫ ܕܝܠ‬dīl.29 Thirdly, the most interesting parallelisms can be found in verb morphology. In fact, the Arabic dialectal verb morphology shows a reduced system that contrasts with the perfect and “algebraic” verbal grammar of ‘Arabiyya. The perfect conjugation in the dialects, very simplified compared with classical verb morphology, is similar to the perfect conjugation in late Aramaic dialects like Syriac (for example, the number of persons and the vocalisation of personal endings).30 The same can be said about the imperfect conjugation and its subjunctive meaning when it is not preceded by affixes (it is morphologically unmarked in Levantine Arabic), and the cases in which the passive of simple tri- radical verbs is formed using the VIII pattern and not the VII31. Again, the possibility of an Aramaic influence on these features has not been studied. Syntax There are a number of cases in which there seems to be agreement on a possible influence of Aramaic on the syntax of some Eastern Arabic dialects: Firstly, the Aramaic tendency to lose the preposition indicating directionality appears also in Arabic dialects.32 Like in Aramaic, l- and ‘alā take the place of ilā. 27 S. Weninger, ‘Aramaic-Arabic Language Contact’, in The Semitic Languages, ed. S. Weninger, p. 749; J. Owens, A Linguistic History of Arabic, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006, pp. 244-245. 28 Christa Muller-Kessler, ‘Aramaic ’k’, lyk’ and Iraqi Arabic ’aku, maku: The Mesopotamian Particles of Existence’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 123 (2003), pp. 641-646. A common feature of this dialectal group (Mandaic, Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic and koine Babylonian Aramaic of some incantation texts) is the use of a particle ’k/’k’ to express existence (BTA ‫’ איכא‬īkkā < ’īt+kā, ‫“ איכא גברא ביהודאי‬there is a man among Jews”, Baba Meṣia 86a; negative ‫ ליכא‬līkkā) instead of the common )‫ ל(א א)ית(י‬/ )‫אית(י‬. 29 Anyway, we should remember here the Moroccan particle dyāl, dyālt with the same function. 30 J. Blau, ‘On some Arabic dialectal features paralleled by Hebrew and Aramaic’, Jewish Quaterly Review 76:1 (1985), p. 6. 31 J. Blau, ‘The influence of living Aramaic’, in J. Blau, Studies in Middle Arabic, p. 289. M. W. Cowell, A Reference Grammar of Syrian Arabic, pp. 234 and 343; A. S. Kaye & J. Rosenhouse, ‘Arabic Dialects and Maltese’, in The Semitic Languages, ed. R. Hetzron, pp. 291-292, 303. 32 M. W. Cowell, A Reference Grammar of Syrian Arabic, p. 476. 135  Francisco del Río Sánchez Compare Dan 2:17 ‫ לביתה אזל‬lǝbayteh ↄazal (“[Daniel] went to his home”) and Ez 5:3 ‫ↄ אתה עליהון‬ata calēhōn (“he came to them”) with Syrian waṣalnā lǝ-‘Ammān (“we have arrived to cAmmān”) or Lebanese raḥ as-su’ (“he went to the sūq”).33 Secondly, in the dialects in which the special marker for the direct object has practically disappeared, the differentiation between subject and object becomes more precarious. In these cases, the solution to this problem is similar to Aramaic: a) Using an unmarked object. Compare Dan 3:5 ‫ תשמעון קל קרנא‬tišmǝ‘ūn qal qarnā “[when] you hear the voice of the horn” or Syriac ‫ ܒܢܐ ܒܝܬܐ‬bnā baytā “he built a house”34 with bā‘ il-bēt “he sold the house”, šaft ǝl-bint “he saw the girl” (Damascus), šǝfna ğīġānna “we have seen our neighbours” (Iraq, qǝltu), ğaṛṛaytu ǝlxanğar “I drew the dagger” (Kinderib, qǝltu). b) With a periphrasis of direct object formed with a proleptic pronoun and the datival preposition l-.35 Compare Syriac ‫ܒܠܘܗܝ ܠܛܟܣܐ‬ ̄ ‫ ܒܠ‬balbǝlūy lǝ-ṭeksā “they confused the order” with šifto l- Aḥmed “I saw Aḥmed” (Levantine) or tzawwağha l-ṣadīqta “he married his friend” (Iraq, gəlet). Thirdly, as in Aramaic, the proleptic pronoun is also attested in pronominal possessive constructions (the genitival periphrasis called səmīkūt kəfūlah ‫סמיכות‬ ‫ כפולה‬according to the terminology of Uzi Ornan): compare the Syriac ‫ܒܪܗ‬ ‫ ܕܡܠܟܐ‬breh dǝ-malkā “the son of the king”, with ‘ammo lǝ-flān “somebody’s uncle” (Lebanese), baytu la-ğārna “the house of our neighbour” or bittu laš-šayḫ “the daughter of the Sheikh” (Cilicia).36 33 About the possibility of use l- before personal and indefinite pronouns (li-man) as in Aramaic, see J. Blau, ‘The influence of living Aramaic’, in J. Blau Studies in Middle Arabic, p. 289. 34 J. Blau, ‘On some Arabic dialectal features paralleled by Hebrew and Aramaic’, Jewish Quaterly Review 76:1 (1985), pp. 7-9. 35 S. Weninger, “’ramaic-Arabic Language Contact’, The Semitic Languages, ed. S. Weninger, p. 750; J. Blau, A Grammar of Christian Arabic, based mainly on South-Palestinian Text from the First Millenium, I-III, «Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium» 267, 276, 279, Subsidia 27- 29, Louvain: Secrétariat du CSChO, pp. 413-415. 36 S. Weninger, ‘Aramaic-Arabic Language Contact’, in The Semitic Languages, ed. S. Weninger, p. 750; P. Behnstedt, ‘Arabe Levantino’, in Manual de Dialectología Neoárabe, eds F. Corriente & A. Vicente, p. 174. 136