PhDnix's Blog

Was “this” really that?!

In medieval times, the orthographic principle of Classical Arabic spelling was believed to be one of “pausal spelling”, i.e. words were spelled the way they were pronounced in word-final (or more accurately: isolated) position. This is the explanation as to why the indefinite accusative e.g. in raǧulan “a man [ACC]” is written رجلا, as though…
Making Sense of Šāḏḏ: The Written and the Oral

So how does a reading actually become šāḏḏ? An excellent and intricate network of text re-use is to be found in the discussion of Q2:33 انبيهم. In recitation today, there is nothing unusual about this word. All readers read it as one would expect: ʾambiʾhum(ū). This can be said to be its “canonical recitation”, and…
Making Sense of Šāḏḏ: Single Strand Transmissions

In his work on the emergence of the category of Šāḏḏ reading, Shady Nasser has suggested that there are a number of factors that may play into certain transmission paths to later come to be considered Šāḏḏ. One of these criteria is that readings that are transmitted through a single strand of transmission are filtered…
The “Canonization” of Warsh?

In recent months I’ve been very busy exploring the concept of šāḏḏ within the literature of Quranic Reading Traditions. This term is frequently translated as “non-canonical”, and thus the šāḏḏ readings are “non-canonical readings”. This concept of canonicity is then expanded to the so-called šawāḏḏ works. Medieval works that have long lists of variant readings…
Segolate Plurals and North-West Semitic

Yesterday, I wrote a little thread on the productive segolate plurals in Arabic, and how this challenges some of the notions of this as a North-West-Semitic isogloss. I received some pushback, several people felt I misrepresented Huehnergard's position. I still don't feel I quite did that. Huehnergard clearly not only sees the spread of the…
Laysa r-rasmu bi-qirāʾah!

Me and my dear friend and colleague Hythem Sidky keep on telling each other that every time we're at a conference, we should get pins that read ليس الرسم بقراءة "The consonantal skeleton is not a reading!", because this motto highlights an extremely common misunderstanding within the field. I'm attempting the description of this mistake…
Tawātur al-Qirāʾāt according to ibn al-Jazarī

One of the interesting parts of modern Islamic orthodoxy is the belief that the ten canonical reading traditions are transmitted by tawātur, mass transmission so massive that it is unthinkable that people could have agreed upon a lie. The requirement of tawātur doesn't really enter the Islamic discourse until rather late, and while it has become the…
Medio-Passives of the Primae Waw verbs

A final conundrum among a whole slew of conundrums among these among the primae waw verbs is the behaviour of the mediopassive derivation. In general, I don't think we are quite ready to reconstruct the Proto-Berber at all yet, a bunch of Berber languages show vastly different formations, which do not seem obviously reconcilable, but even…
More Proto-Berber Primae Waw

After my previous blogpost, Maarten Kossmann pushed back in the comments on Twitter on the idea that *əw really yields *u, which is something that would be needed to derive *əssuɣəd from *əssəwɣəd. There are, namely several cases where u and əw really seem to remain distinct, especially in the *CəCC-an plural pattern. Thus *a-ḍăwwal pl. *i-ḍəwl-an 'brother-in-law' where the later does not…
Proto-Berber Primae Waw: Is it really a /w/?

Last time I talked a bit about an interesting possible connection of how Berber and Semitic treat verbs with initial w as the first root consonant, both of them notably seem to lack the w in the underived prefix conjugation, but reappears on other derivations. Thus yaqid but causative yūqid in Semitic, and *yăqqəd but causative *yəssuɣəd in Berber. But…