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Journal of Semitic Studies 2007 52(2):335-368; doi:10.1093/jss/fgm007
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©The author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of Manchester. All rights reserved.

Articles

New Data on the Delateralization of Dad and its merger with Za’ in Classical Arabic: Contributions from Old South Arabic and the Earliest Islamic Texts on D / Z Minimal Pairs

Jonathan A.C. Brown

University of Washington

The history of the phoneme dad and its merger with the phoneme za’ has proven enigmatic. By presenting data from Old South Arabian speech communities and lexical data from the Islamic tradition, this article brackets a period of dad / za’ free variation between the fourth and mid-eighth centuries CE. These data support the theory that the pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabic speech community was divided into two segments in respect to the dad / za’ relationship: a group that pronounced both separately and produced the lettered tradition of the Qur’an, and some that did not distinguish between the two phonemes. This article presents data from the earliest Arabic texts on dad / za’ minimal pairs, those of Abu ‘Umar al-Zahid (d. 345/957) and al-Sahib Isma‘il Ibn ‘Abbad (d. 385/995). These texts also provide glimpses into how the Islamic lexical tradition explained the historical link between the two phonemes.


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