The Arabic dialect of the Rwala tribe, based on the ethnographic records of Alois Musil

Thesis

This thesis presents a linguistic description of the dialect of the Rwala tribe of northern Arabia as presented in Alois Musil’s (1928) ethnographical work 'The manners and customs of the Rwala bedouins'. A systematic presentation of the phonology and morphology is given, which compares the grammar of the language as Musil recorded it with other sources of the Rwala dialect, and with sources of north-Arabian dialects more broadly, in order to assess the fidelity of Musil’s transcriptions. A complete glossary of Musil’s work has been compiled according to the grammar as set out in the rest of the thesis.

Chapter 1 places the Rwala dialect in its north-Arabian context and considers the other sources useful for comparative work and the relevant isoglosses and classificatory characteristics of bedouin, north-Arabian, and Najdi dialects. In chapter 2 the phonology is presented, where it is discussed that Musil’s system of transcription is unlikely to convey the true nature of the sound system of the dialect, and that several important phonological processes recorded for dialects of the type to which Rwala belongs are attested significantly less in Musil than in other accounts. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the morphology of nominal and verbal forms, where idiosyncrasies in Musil are highlighted, although it is shown that in general his record of the language is in line with what would be expected. Chapter 5 deals with function words with similar conclusions to chapters 3 and 4, and in chapter 6 a preliminary lexical study is carried out which demonstrates the similarity of the dialect as presented by Musil to other Najdi dialects.

Authors: O'Hara, J

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Nabaṭī poetry; Rwala; Phonology; Alois Musil; Bedouin dialects; Najdi dialects; Morphology
• Subjects: Arabic language; Arabic dialects; Arabic linguistics