HU Credits: 4

Degree/Cycle: 1st degree (Bachelor)

Responsible Department: Dept. of Arabic Language and Literature

Semester: Yearly

Teaching Languages: Arabic

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator:

Coordinator Email:

Coordinator Office Hours:

Teaching Staff:
Dr. Ori Shachmon

Course/Module description:
This course provides students with basic working tools in the field of Arabic dialectology, viz. transcription skills, dialect classification and analysis, etc. In addition, the students are exposed to the very different types of Arabic dialects which are spoken in the Palestinian realm.

Course/Module aims:
Along the course we learn principles of linguistic fieldwork and the students conduct their own fieldwork and record native speakers of Palestinian dialects. The results are then transcribed and translated, and carefully analyzed according to the classifications and linguistic topics studied in the previous semester. Each student is referred to professional articles relevant to his/her recorded materials. The students present their work in class and share their experience with their classmates.

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
Students will develop awareness and sensitivity to variation in Arabic dialects and will acquire basic tools to define the differences using the accepted linguistic terminology. They will become familiar with the terminology and prominent researchers in the field, and will thus be able to read the scientific literature and to continue their studies in the field of Arabic dialectology.

Attendance requirements(%):
85%

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Frontal lectures; Guided sessions in the language labs; Personal instruction in field work methods and processing materials; Classroom presentations and discussion.

Course/Module Content:
1. General transcription
2. Classification of Arabic Dialects:
• Urban varieties - illustrated using recorded texts from Jerusalem, Ramle, Haifa and Nablus.
• Rural varieties - illustrated through texts from the Triangle, villages around Ramallah and Mount Hebron.
• Bedouin varieties - illustrated through texts from Galilee, the Judean Desert and the Negev.
3. Grammatical topics: Consonant and vowel systems, stress patterns, verbal paradigms, tenses and moods, nominal patterns, prominent syntactic features.
4. Linguistic field work - Principles and methods
5. Dialect geography and mapping.
6. Personal presentations of fieldwork outcomes.

Required Reading:
Blanc, H. (1964) Communal Dialects in Baghdad, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Chapter 2: Communal dialects in the Arab World, pp. 12-16.
Eilhay, J. (2004) The Olive tree dictionary :a transliterated dictionary of conversational Eastern Arabic (Palestinian), Jerusalem: Minerva.
Fischer, W. and Jastrow, O. (1980) Handbuch der arabischen Dialekte, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Jastrow, O. (2004) "The Arabic Dialects of the muthallath (Central Israel)", in: Levin, A. (ed.), Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 29: 166-175.
Levin, A. (2005) "The Arabic Dialects of Upper Galilee", in: Aguadé, J., Vicente, A., Abu-Shams, L. (eds.) Sacrum Arabo-Semiticum. Zaragoza: Instituto de Etudios Islámicos. pp. 255-264.
Palva, H. (1984) "A general classification for the Arabic dialects spoken in Palestine and Transjordan", Studia Orientalia 55:18, pp. 359-376.
Shachmon, O. (2011) "Pausal final ima:la in central Palestinian dialects", in: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 38: 145-161.

Additional Reading Material:
Arnold, W. (2004) “Die arabischen Dialekte von Jaffa und Umgebung”, in: Haak, M. Jong, R. de, and Versteegh, K. (eds.), Approaches to Arabic dialects :a collection of articles presented to Manfred Woidich on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, Leiden : Brill, pp. 33-46.
Bauer, L. (1913) Das palästinische Arabisch: die Dialekte des Städters und des Fellachen, Leipzig:
Bergsträsser, G. (1915) Sprachatlas von Syrien und Palästina, Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs`sche. J.C. Hinrichs.
Blanc, H. (1970) “The Arabic Dialect of the Negev Bedouins”, Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, vol.4, pp. 112-150.
Blanc, H. (1970) “Dual and Pseudo-Dual in the Arabic Dialects”, Language, 46.1: 42-57
Blau, J. (1960) Syntax des palästinensischen Bauerndialektes von Bir-Zet, Walldorf-Hessen.
Cantineau, J. (1939) “Remarques sur les parlers sédentaires syro-libano-palestiniens”, Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de paris 40, pp. 80-88.
Cleveland, R. L. "Notes on an Arabic Dialect of Southern Palestine", in: Bulletin of the American Society of Oriental Research 185 (1967), pp. 43–57.
Garbell, I. (1958) “Remarks on the Historical Phonology of an East Mediterranean Arabic Dialect”, in: Al-Ani, S.H. (ed.), Readings in Arabic Linguistics, Indiana, 1978 (re-print), pp. 203-240.
Geva-Kleinberger, A. (2004) Die Arabischen Stadtdialekte von Haifa. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Hopkins, S. (2011) “Notes on the History of the Arabic Language in Palestine”, in: Lingua-Culture Contextual Studies in Ethnic Conflicts of the World. vol. 20: 50-73.
Rosenhouse, J. and Dbayyat, N. (2006) "Gender switch in female speech", in: Anthropoligical Linguistics vol. 48: 169-186.
Schmidt, H. and Kahle, P. (1918-1930) Volkserzählungen aus Palästina, gesammelt bei den Bauern von Bir Zet, Gottingen : Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
Seeger, U. (2009) Der arabische Dialekt der Dörfer um Ramallah, Tl. 1: Texte; Tl. 2: Glossar. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (Semitica Viva Bd. 44).

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 0 %
Presentation 0 %
Participation in Tutorials 20 %
Project work 0 %
Assignments 40 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 40 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %

Additional information: