The Arabic Language.

• Author: KAYE, ALAN S.
• Position: Review

The Arabic Language. By KEES VERSTEEGH. New York: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS; Edinburgh: EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1997. Pp. vii + 277.

According to the author, the aim of this book is to present a sketch of the history of Arabic (p. vii). This is a noble goal indeed, since there are few books on this topic in any language. At the very outset, the reader is told that Arabic is, in essence, two languages (or dialects), which have been characterized from the beginning by the dichotomy between a standard and a vernacular (the so-called diglossia, in reality multiglossia, better known today as a linguistic continuum). But then we read that the latter variety "serves as the mother tongue for most speakers..."(ibid.). Thus the author is claiming that there are native speakers of Modern Standard or Classical Arabic, which is not supported by the facts. Arabic-speaking children grow up speaking an Arabic colloquial dialect as their mother tongue. Many of them go on to become literate in the standard language--an accomplishment tied directly to the education systems in the various Arab countries.

Chapter one, "The Development of the Study of Arabic" (pp. 1-8), discusses among other things, Islamic Spain and the works of Pedro de Alcal[acute{a}] on la lengua araviga (= Andalusi Arabic); Golius (1596-1667), the author of the first major Arabic dictionary in the West (Lexicon Arabico-Latinum); the creation of a chair for colloquial Arabic dialects ("arabe vulgaire") in Paris in 1820 at the [acute{E}]cole des langues orientales; and the study of Arabic in relation to Hebrew, Ethiopic or [Ge.sup.[subset]]ez, and the other Semitic languages. One noteworthy conclusion with which I am firmly in agreement is that the various scholarly circles working on Arabic linguistics today "are very much working in isolation from each other" (p. 7). This unfortunate situation is due to several factors: e.g., the different linguistic theories used by the researchers.

Chapter two deals with the position of Arabic within the Semitic family (pp. 9-22). Versteegh maintains that the classification of Eblaite and Ugaritic are still disputed (p. 9). (He uses the names Eblaitic and Amoritic for the more common Eblaite and Amorite, respectively.) While this is correct as far as Ugaritic is concerned, M. Krebernik ("The Linguistic Classification of Eblaite: Methods, Problems, and Results," in The Study of the Ancient Near East in the 21st Century, ed. J. Cooper and G. M. Schwartz [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996], 233- 49) has demonstrated that Eblaite is to be classified as an early Akkadian dialect. Even if one disagrees with this, the language is unquestionably East Semitic.

Turning to the author's comments on Syriac, it is incorrect to state that "it survives in a number of linguistic enclaves" (p. 10), since Modern Aramaic languages and dialects do not descend directly from the classical language. In similar fashion, V. notes that the Modern South Arabian languages "probably" do not directly derive from Old South Arabian (p. 94). We further note V.'s phraseology, which follow the thesis of Giovanni Garbini's Le...