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Agreement patterns in Omani Arabic: Sociolinguistic conditioning and diachronic developments

Issue: Vol 12 No. 2 (2018) Special Issue: Arabic between tradition and globalization

Subject Areas: Gender Studies Linguistics

Abstract:

This article treats the sociolinguistic factors, which play a role in determining agreement variation in Omani Arabic. Though the prescriptive rules of Standard Arabic are found to have an influence, this is by no means the only factor at play, and the type of variation observed in the data is (also) motivated by language-internal dynamics. The influence of more prestigious spoken varieties is also found to have a role in determining agreement. In the concluding paragraph, some insight are offered on how these facts could help reconstructing the historical development of agreement patterns in Arabic.

Author: Simone Bettega

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