The Archaic Feminine Ending -at in Shammari Arabic

Abstract

This paper discusses the feminine nominal suffixes -at and plural -āt in the Shammari Arabic dialect. It will show that its pausal allomorphs are best understood as the result of a pausal rule *t > y. The Shammari dialect must therefore go back to a dialect that had *-at in all environments and not -ah word-finally and -at in construct, as is often taken to be the original situation in all modern Arabic dialects. After this discussion, several other dialects that appear to point to feminine ending systems which deviate from the general modern Arabic trend will be discussed. A tentative suggestion is given that the Dōsiri dialect of Kuwait goes back to a dialect with a Classical Arabic distribution for the feminine singular ending: -a in pause, -at everywhere else.