Orthography and Phonology in Vocalized Medieval Christian Arabic Gospel Manuscripts

Abstract

Pre-modern vocalized Arabic manuscripts can reveal a great deal about a variety of linguistic features represented in each text. Recent work has demonstrated the potential that vocalized manuscripts have, specifically for revealing aspects of the phonology of the corpora including the Quran, Judaeo-Arabic, and later ‘Middle Arabic’ texts. Christian Arabic texts, however, have been less frequently studied in this manner. Blau’s grammar of the Christian Arabic of south Palestine in the 9th/10th centuries CE4 draws primarily on unvocalized manuscripts, and therefore the phonological details he provides are inferred primarily from consonantal orthographic patterns. While a few others have focused on Christian Arabic manuscripts from the medieval period,6 there has been little work that undertakes a phonological description of vocalized Christian manuscripts in a thorough and systematic way.