Aramaic Substrate in the Arabic Dialects of Kufr-Kanna and Mišhad

Abstract

This paper focusses attention on the Aramaic substrate of the dialects spoken in the villages of Kufr-Kanna and Mišhad, north of Nazareth (KM) i.e. lexical traces. Significantly, KM borrows vocabulary from Aramaic and also preserves features of this language. Either the candidate substrate words attested in KM existed in Syriac and Neo- Aramaic dialects, but not in Classical Arabic (CA), or they differ in terms of phonology, morphology and semantics from CA. The data show that unlike CA, substrate words preserve Aramaic phonology, e.g., Aramaic š (CA s): KM šaţaḥ ‘to go out in an open space’, Syriac šţaḥ, CA saţaḥa ‘to lay down’. Despite the difficulty in determining a word as being from an earlier substrate, some words seem to qualify as substrate, e.g. Syriac šlaḥ, KM šiliḥ ‘to take off’, CA salaḫ. A semantic influence can also be prominent and help us to reveal the origin of the word, e.g., Syriac štal, KM šatal ‘to plant’, while the CA √štl occurs in place-names. Attestation and distribution in both Aramaic and Arabic are also useful, e.g., KM šaţaḥ, Syriac šţaḥ, CA saţaḥa. It is interesting also that many words in KM are shared with other dialects, e.g. the Western Neo-Aramaic dialect of Ma‘lūla, to which the Aramaic substrate of KM belongs. Such attestations are of particular importance in order to establish substrate influence.