Thursday 10 December 2020
At 4:00 pm (UAE time)
Online conference
In case you missed it, you can still watch the conference by clicking here
Join Prof. David Wilmsen for the online conference on
Emirati Dialects’ Singular Features: The "Sharjah Museums Authority Recordings” as a Data Source
This conference focuses on his work with a series of recorded folk histories related by people who had been resident in the old town of Sharjah in pre-oil days, collected between 2008 and 2013 and housed at the Sharjah Museums Authority
Conference abstract
Emirati Arabic is the least studied of the dialects of the Arabian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Gulf of Aden, apart from Hamdi Qafisheh’s grammar of the dialect of Abu Dhabi compiled in the 1970s, while there have been no studies of the dialects of the northern Emirates of the federation.
All Emirati dialects are descendants of a chain of ancient Arabic vernaculars that extended from the southwestern coastal areas of Yemen, along the seaside and valleys of Oman, through the Emirates to Bahrain. One indication of their age is that they all share in a bundle of five or so features that are either not found in the dialects of the wider Arabophone world or only encountered sporadically.
Pr. David Wilmsen came to the Emirates specifically to investigate one of these features, the existential particle
šī, which is present only in that chain of dialects. He subsequently expanded his inquiries to include two others of those features: the presentative
aku and the participial infix -
nn-. His research into existential
šī has recently developed to include consideration of the analogous particle
śī of the Modern South Arabian languages.
Know more about Prof. David Wilmsen
Prof. David Wilmsen is Head of the Department of Arabic and Translation Studies at the American University of Sharjah. A distinguished linguist and dialectologist, his work and publications focus on the syntax and morphology of Arabic vernaculars.
This event is in cooperation with the CEFAS
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