• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 206

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

The usage of the Ghamdi diphthongs by Ghamdi migrants in the city of Makka: between preservation and variation

Authors: Alghamdi, Najla Manie
Submitted by: Alghamdi, Najla Manie (University of Essex, United Kingdom)

In this paper, I will present some of the results concerning the variables (aw) and (ay), which concerns the monophthongization of the diphthongs [aʊ] and [aj] as in [laʊn] ~ [lɔ:n] ‘colour’ and [bajt] ~ [bɛ:t] ‘home’. The results were drawn from a sociolinguistic study that investigates the outcome of dialect contact in the city of Makka. In particular, it focuses on a group of migrants in the city, namely the Ghamdi tribe, who originally came from the south- western town of Al-Baha. According to Prochazka (1988), the Ghamdi dialect is grouped among the southern Hijaz dialects based on the reflexes of the Classical Arabic pattern that is C¹ aC² aC³. The two dialects in contact, Ghamdi and Makkan, differ at almost all linguistic levels, including phonology, morphology, morpho- phonemic and morpho- syntax. Following Labov, the linguistic changes were examined in correlation with social variables namely, age, gender and regionality. The regionality variable was chosen due to the differences between the speakers’ place of birth and age of arrival to Makka. The reginality Index , includes 7 components, Chambers (2000), helps in classifying Ghamdi migrants into indigenous, nearly indigenous, fairly indigenous, Interloper, nearly interloper and fairly interloper.

The main assumptions in this study are, (i) women are the leader of the linguistic changes, (ii) young Ghamdies completely abandon their native features in favour of the Makkan features, and (iii) the more indigenous are the Ghamdi migrants the more fluent they are in using Makkan variety. However, the results reject the first two assumptions and confirm the third one. The regionality variable, in this study, was crucial in explaining the rejection and confirmation of the main assumptions, which will be presented in detail.