New Data on the Delateralization of ?ād and its merger with ?ā’ in Classical Arabic: Contributions from Old South Arabic and the Earliest Islamic Texts on ? / ? Minimal Pairs

摘要

The history of the phoneme ?ād and its merger with the phoneme ?ā’ 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 ?ād / ?ā’ 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 ?ād / ?ā’ relationship: a group that pronounced both separately and produced the lettered tradition of the Qur’ān, and some that did not distinguish between the two phonemes. This article presents data from the earliest Arabic texts on ?ād / ?ā’ minimal pairs, those of Abu ‘Umar al-Zāhid (d. 345/957) and al-?ā?ib Ismā‘īl Ibn ‘Abbād (d. 385/995). These texts also provide glimpses into how the Islamic lexical tradition explained the historical link between the two phonemes.