Copyright

Wiktor Gębski

Published On

2024-04-15

Page Range

pp. 1–22

Language

  • English

Print Length

22 pages

1. Introduction

Chapter of: A Grammar of the Jewish Arabic Dialect of Gabes(pp. 1–22)
The introductory chapter comprises several sub-sections outlining the theoretical and methodological background of the study. After a brief description of the history of the Jewish community of Gabes, an overview of its Arabic dialect is provided. Building on various phonological and morphological isoglosses, the argument is presented that this dialect is a sedentary variety that originated in the first wave of Arabisation of the Maghreb in the seventh century CE. Currently, due to the process of language obsolescence, this dialect is on the brink of extinction. The subsequent section addresses existing scholarship on North African Arabic and its challenges, with a particular emphasis on the scarcity of data from provincial cities and the lack of syntactic studies in the field of spoken Judaeo-Arabic. Following this, the next section seeks to explore the linguistic landscape in pre-Islamic North Africa. Given that Jewish Gabes belongs to the group of first-wave dialects, it is reasonable to search in it for traces of languages spoken in the region before the seventh century CE. The final section elucidates the methodology and transcription system used in the study.

Contributors

Wiktor Gębski

(author)
Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Cambridge
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2577-6553

Dr Wiktor Gębski is a linguist specialising in Arabic dialectology and Hebrew. Hailing from Poland, he completed his BA and MA in Hebrew and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Warsaw. Between 2014 and 2016 he pursued Hebrew and Arabic studies at the University of Tel Aviv as a scholar of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2022 he gained his PhD from the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. His doctoral dissertation The Jewish Dialect of Gabes (Southern Tunisia): Phonology, Morphology, Syntax was written under the supervision of Professor Geoffrey Khan. It entailed documentation of this endangered North-African Arabic dialect. The project was based on extensive fieldwork in Israel and France, during which Dr Gebski recorded the last native speakers of Jewish Gabes. For his work towards the preservation of Jewish linguistic heritage, in 2022 he was awarded the Oliver Cromwell Prize in Jewish Studies. Currently, Dr Gebski is a Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellow at FAMES, Cambridge, where he teaches Modern Hebrew and conducts research on Jewish and Muslim varieties of spoken Maghrebi Arabic. His academic interests involve language endangerment, the syntax of spoken Arabic, and language contact between Jewish dialects of Arabic and Israeli Hebrew.