Notes on Language Change and Standardization in Damascus Arabic
Abstract
This paper attempts to point out some linguistic changes observed in Damascus and its tendency towards standardization. The objective is to provide new material to update the sociolinguistic state of Damascus Arabic. Because the main studies focused on this variety were written some years ago, they generally do not reflect the changes and trends in the language produced by the contemporary social context.
This study examines eleven types of morphological and morpho-syntactical variants from a corpus of texts gathered in Damascus between 2007 and 2010, and produced almost wholy by young informants. Results are compared to the data available in previous grammars and papers, and demonstrate a rapid standardization taking place mainly through variant reduction (koineization), the decline or disappearance of traditional features (variety shifting), and the spreading of variants previously assigned to particular collectives to others (homogenization). Finally, new tendencies in Damascus Arabic observed in our data which merit further sociolinguistic research will be indicated.
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