Variation dialectale et arabophonie : Quelques modes d’interprétation des faits

While preparing an article devoted to the study of some ancient and modern traits of dialectal variation in Arabic, we noticed, after consulting linguistic atlases—still too few in number—that preliminary work was essential: dialectological science has made remarkable progress over the last twenty years. These advances are partly due to more refined analysis and more rigorous interpretation of older and modern dialectal atlases. A true historical dialectology is developing as an independent discipline. A fundamental work that can be cited here is Historical Dialectology, Regional and Social, edited by Jacek Fisiak in 1988. This work seems remarkable to us, particularly because it uses very similar analysis procedures across a variety of linguistic groups (Romance, Germanic, and especially Slavic).

In the field of Hamito-Semitic studies, however, we find that Arabic is completely absent, and the only language that holds a place in this domain is Coptic, a dead language as we know. To fill this gap, it seemed indispensable to us to examine several published Arabic dialectal atlases, particularly in light of the analysis procedures implemented in Historical Dialectology, in order to verify their possible applicability to the Arabic domain. It goes without saying that a significant difficulty in comparing European and Arabic dialectology lies in the different social structures, as nomadism is exceptional in European societies while it is present everywhere in Arab societies. Considering these intrinsic differences, we will successively examine some of these analysis procedures and how they may be applied to Arabic dialectology. The present work does not claim to be exhaustive.