Object and Genitive Pronouns between the Ancient Arabic Dialects and Standard Arabic

Abstract

What stands out to the student of pronouns in the ancient Arabic dialects—especially in comparison with Standard Arabic—is what the grammarians recorded of dialectal phenomena that deviate from common, regular Arab usage, equally striking is the clear mixing in pronominal usage whereby one pronoun is placed where another should stand, such as using a nominative pronoun in positions requiring the accusative or genitive, and conversely using accusative/genitive pronouns where the nominative is expected, added to this is the multiplicity of pronominal forms across Arabic dialects and the differing schools of usage among the Arabs, to delimit the topic, this study traces the forms of object (accusative) and genitive pronouns in the early dialects, shows their development and exchange of syntactic positions, and follows them to the settled forms in Standard Arabic, it concludes that Standard Arabic represents a selective and stabilized state of pronouns that were originally multiform, and that this development is best understood within the broader context of inter-dialectal interaction and contact among diverse speech communities, which produced linguistic variations that enriched Arabic’s grammatical structure