Catherine Taine-Cheikh | Études de linguistique ouest-saharienne

Études de linguistique ouest-saharienne

Vol. 1. Sociolinguistique de l’aire hassanophone

Ce premier volume d’une série de quatre porte le sous-titre Sociolinguistique de l’aire hassanophone. Il réunit douze études dont la parution s’échelonne entre 1989 et 2013, et qui traitent sous différents aspects des relations que la société maure entretient (ou a entretenues) avec les langues dans diverses circonstances, que ce soit l’arabe dans ses différentes variétés (dialectales ou non) le berbère, les langues des communautés voisines ou encore celles introduites par la colonisation.
     L’ordre dans lequel les articles sont présentés est assez proche de l’ordre chronologique, mais si certains d’entre eux traitent de problèmes connexes, chacun peut se lire indépendamment des autres.
     Le premier article, qui dresse un panorama assez général, constitue une introduction assez complète sur le dialecte ḥassāniyya et la situation sociolinguistique de la Mauritanie. Quant aux articles suivants, ils traitent de diverses questions plus spécifiques telles que la question des relations entre les langues et les identités, tant en Mauritanie qu’au Sud marocain; la question de la politique linguistique et du choix des langues dans l’enseignement; la question des emprunts à l’arabe classique et de l’usage des alternances codiques; la question de l’orientation et de la dénomination mouvante des points cardinaux; la question des changements linguistiques liés à l’urbanisation; enfin la question des spécificités ethnolinguistiques des groupes de pêcheurs et de chasseurs maures.
TAINE-CHEIKH Catherine, 2016, Études de linguistique ouest-saharienne, vol. 1. Sociolinguistique de l’aire hassanophone, Maroc : Centre des Études Sahariennes, 325 p.
Publié début mai 2016

Vol. 2. Onomastique, poésie et traditions orales

Ce deuxième volume d’une série de quatre porte le sous-titre Onomastique, poésie et traditions orales. Il réunit quinze textes parus entre 1985 et 2008 et, pour l’essentiel, entre 1994 et 2006.
     Le premier texte, qui est aussi le plus récent, peut constituer une introduction aux questions littéraires : il présente le double profil de la littérature mauritanienne de langue arabe (celui en arabe classique et celui en arabe dialectal) en insistant sur le volet poétique qui occupe une place primordiale dans les deux cas. La plupart des articles du volume portent d’ailleurs spécifiquement sur la poésie, mais sous des aspects toujours différents.
     La question de la toponymie est très présente dans ce volume, comme elle l’est dans la poésie maure. Elle est traitée notamment dans les trois articles consacrés spécifiquement à l’onomastique (toponymie et /ou anthroponymie).
     Si les quatre derniers textes relèvent de champs connexes, ceux sur l’injure et la médisance font appel à de nombreuses données puisées dans la poésie ou les traditions orales. quant à ceux présentant le style de l’écrivain-journaliste Habib Ould Mahfoudh ou les caractéristiques des “devinettes-colles” pastorales, ils s’intéressent à la culture maure dans ses rapports avec le français ou avec les traditions orales en arabe classique.
  1. Langue(s) et littérature(s) arabes de Mauritanie (13)
  2. Toponymie et urbanisation (27)
  3. Eléments d’anthroponymie maure. Enjeux et significations du non d’ego (41)
  4. L’onomastique comme enjeu. Réflexions du point de vue linguistique, sociolinguistique et historique (77)
  5. Le pilier et la corde : recherches sur la poésie maure (91)
  6. Pouvoir de la poésie et poésie du pouvoir. Le cas de la société maure (123)
  7. Poésie et musique (155)
  8. Poésie dialectale et noms de lieux (165)
  9. Réflexions autour de la langue de la poésie maure (179)
  10. Le dess(e)in de la rime. La poésie graphique de Mauritanie a-t-elle un lilen avec le muwashshah ?
  11. Poésies d’itinéraires et itinéraires poétiques chez les nomades sahariens (217)
  12. De l’injure en pays maure ou « qui ne loue pas critique » (247)
  13. Les voies / voix de la médisance en pays maure (277)
  14. Brève incursion dans les Mauritanides (297)
  15. Quand les bergers maures se lancent des ‘colles’ (303)
TAINE-CHEIKH Catherine, 2017, Études de linguistique ouest-saharienne, vol. 2. Onomastique, poésie et traditions orales, Maroc : Centre des Études Sahariennes, 343 p.
Publié à la mi-septembre 2017

Creating Standards. Interactions with Arabic script in 12 manuscript cultures

Dmitry Bondarev, Alessandro Gori, and Lameen Souag (fr/en) (eds)

Creating Standards.
Interactions with Arabic script in 12 manuscript cultures

Manuscript cultures based on Arabic script feature various tendencies in standardisation of orthography, script types and layout. Unlike previous studies, this book steps outside disciplinary and regional boundaries and provides a typological cross-cultural comparison of standardisation processes in twelve Arabic-influenced writing traditions where different cultures, languages and scripts interact. A wide range of case studies give insights into the factors behind uniformity and variation in Judeo-Arabic in Hebrew script, South Palestinian Christian Arabic, New Persian, Aljamiado of the Spanish Moriscos, Ottoman Turkish, a single multilingual Ottoman manuscript, Sino-Arabic in northwest China, Malay Jawi in the Moluccas, Kanuri and Hausa in Nigeria, Kabyle in Algeria, and Ethiopian Fidäl script as used to transliterate Arabic. One of the findings of this volume is that different domains of manuscript cultures have distinct paths of standardisation, so that orthography tends to develop its own standardisation principles irrespective of norms applied to layout and script types. This book will appeal to readers interested in manuscript studies, sociolinguistics, literacy studies, and history of writing.

Content

  • Introduction: Orthographic Polyphony in Arabic Script Bondarev, Dmitry ( 1-38)
  • Persian Language in Arabic Script: The Formation of the Orthographic Standard and the Different Graphic Traditions of Iran in the First Centuries of the Islamic Era Orsatti, Paola (39-72)
  • Writing Judaeo-Arabic Wagner, Esther-Miriam (73-92)
  • Cross Palaeographic Traditions. Some Examples from Old Christian Arabic Sources La Spisa, Paolo (93-110)
  • Uses and Written Practices in Aljamiado Manuscripts Castilla, Nuria de (111-130)
  • How to write Turkish? The Vagaries of the Arabo-Persian Script in Ottoman-Turkish Texts Schmidt, Jan (131-146)
  • Developing Consistency in the Absence of Standards – A Manuscript as a Melting- Pot of Languages, Religions and Writing Systems Ivušić, Branka (147-176)
  • Standardisation in Manuscripts written in Sino-Arabic Scripts and xiaojing Sobieroj, Florian (177-216)
  • A Collection of Unstandardised Consistencies? The Use of Jawi Script in a Few Early Malay Manuscripts from the Moluccas Putten, Jan van der (217-236)
  • Standardisation Tendencies in Kanuri and Hausa Ajami Writings Bondarev, Dmitry / Dobronravin, Nikolay (237-270)
  • Kabyle in Arabic Script: A History without Standardisation Souag, Lameen (273-296)
  • Beyond ‘aǧamī in Ethiopia: a short Note on an Arabic-Islamic Collection of Texts written in Ethiopian Script (fidälGori, Alessandro (297-312)

BONDAREV, Dmitry, GORI, Alessandro, and SOUAG, Lameen (eds), Creating Standards: Interactions with Arabic Script in 12 Manuscript Cultures, Berlin: De Gruyter, 326 p.

Paru fin avril 2019

Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt): A Study in Linguistic Contact

Lameen Souag

Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt): A Study in Linguistic Contact

Siwi is the easternmost Berber language, one of the few surviving representatives of the languages spoken in the eastern Sahara before the arrival of Bedouin Arab groups in the 11th century – although this apparent continuity conceals a history of migration, as this book argues based on loanwords and intra-Berber relationships. The complex contact history of Siwi is shown to have involved at least three distinct varieties of Arabic at different periods, as demonstrated here by the reflexes of phonemes such as q and j and by innovative lexical items with limited geographical distributions. The Arabic component of Siwi includes loanwords and calques with no surviving counterpart in modern regional dialects (for example, luli “Dhuhr prayer” < al-’ūlā, qəṭṭ “not at all” < qaṭṭ), indicating a significant time depth and casting light on the history of spoken Arabic as well as of Berber.

The effects of contact upon the grammar are analysed in detail, following and expanding upon the author’s doctoral thesis. These are far more far-reaching than in better documented westerly Berber languages. The morphology has not been immune: Arabic non-concatenative templatic morphology has come to be applied completely productively to Berber adjectival roots and much less productively to Berber nouns, and some prepositions take Arabic rather than Berber pronominal endings. Calquing is prominent: agreement paradigms have been simplified on the model of non-Bedouin Arabic, losing gender distinction in the plural throughout, while the emergence of demonstrative addressee agreement appears to be motivated by early Arabic models. The complex verbal morphology characteristic of Berber has been simplified substantially by the loss of negative forms and directional markers and the conversion of former clitics into affixes, changes which have nonetheless created new irregular forms.

A curious phenomenon straddling the boundary of lexicon and syntax is the borrowing of entire paradigms of numeral+measure phrases from Arabic as synchronically analysable wholes, described here in detail for the first time; this provides a lexically based entry path for syntactic rules, a phenomenon of broader interest in the study of language contact. The usual Berber focus-marking constructions are entirely replaced by Arabic forms, affecting both morphology and syntax. As a necessary prerequisite for the description of contact, this work at the same time examines inherited forms in comparative Berber perspective, including areas that have remained relatively intact such as aspectual morphology, theta-marking adpositions, and person agreement.

Siwi itself is inadequately documented; this book, based on in situ fieldwork, describes Siwi grammar in greater detail than any previous publication, reporting many hitherto unattested constructions and their usage. While Siwi continues to be spoken by all community members, its circumstances are not propitious for long-term survival; bilingualism in Arabic has become virtually universal in the community, significant numbers of Arabic speakers have migrated to the oasis, and some Siwi speakers have internalised the generally negative attitudes of outsiders towards the language. Even now, major changes in lifestyle and increased contact with outsiders have led to vocabulary attrition among the younger generation. Its documentation is thus a matter of some urgency.

This book accordingly includes not just fieldwork-based grammatical and historical analysis and illustrative sentences, but also a selection of Siwi texts spanning multiple genres – public speech, description, storytelling, poetry – and produced by speakers of different ages. These include retellings of Islamic stories and accounts of a popular religious festival specific to Siwa, along with popular religious poetry; as such, it casts light on Islam in the Siwan context as well as on Berber culture.

SOUAG Lameen, 2013 [paru en 2014], Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt): A Study in Linguistic Contact, Köln: Rüdiger Köppe (Berber Studies Vol. 37), 296 p.

Paru le 10 mars 2014

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