SECOND SECTION
3.2 Change in vowels’ quantity
The registers of the three foreign communities interacting in EA show some variation regarding the vowels’ quantity, mainly in stressed syllables.
Concerning the word stress in EA, in his manual Das Kairenisch-Arabische Woidich writes (2006a: 27):
Im Kairenischen hat die Silbe des Wortes mit stärkerem dynamischem Akzent auch gleichzeitig die höhere Tonlage. Der Akzent ist nicht in allen Fällen aus den homologischen Gegebenheiten vorhersagbar, da in einigen Fällen auch morphologische Fakten eine Rolle spielen. Phonologisch konditionierter Akzent ist daher von morphologisch konditioniertem zu unterscheiden.54
Accordingly, stress in EA may fall on syllables with long or short vowels (see Harrell 1957: 15–6, Broselow 1976: 7–16, Woidich 2006b: 325, Watson 2007: 80–81).
Similarly, in Turkish, the “phonetic correlates of stress appear to be loudness and high pitch. Vowel length does not appear to be linked to stress—at least not perceptibly so. It is possible in Turkish words to have a long, unstressed vowel and a short, stressed”
(Kornfilt 1997: 504).
However, this is not the case in Greek and Italian. As stated by Holton et al. (2012:
9–10) “All Greek vowels are slightly longer when stressed. There is very little vowel weakening in unstressed syllables, but when unstressed and in word-final position the vowels may be slightly shorter and slightly devoiced.” Likewise, in Italian in general
“stressed vowels in open syllables are long […] Thus, we find long vowels in penultimate stressed open syllables, semi-long vowels in stressed pre-penultimate open syllables, and short vowels everywhere else” (Krämer 2009: 51).
In fact, perceptible vowel lengthening occurs in the corpus at least 139 times: 11 times in the register of the Turkish characters, 18 in the register of the Italian characters and 110 in the register of the Greek characters.
54 “In Cairo Arabic, the syllable of the word with a stronger dynamic stress also has the higher pitch at the same time. The stress is not predictable in all cases with homologous conditions, because in some cases morphological facts also play a role. Phonologically conditioned stress is therefore to be distinguished from morphologically conditioned one.”
With very few exceptions, all occurrences of vowel lengthening in the register of Greek characters happen in the tonic syllables, either in opened syllables—/keˑ.da/ ‘so’, /ɣuˑna/ ‘singing’, /ʔaˑ.dab/ ‘good manners’—or closed ones—/moˑm.kin/ ‘possible’, /xɑˑḍ.re.tak/ ‘you (s.m., respect form)’, /ʔa.faˑn.di/ ‘efendi’. That is certainly explained by the phonological background in Greek.
The perceptible vowel lengthening occurs 18 times in the register of the actors playing the role of Italians. Among these occurrences, six can be explained based on Italian lengthening of the stressed vowel in open syllable, i.e. /ʔaˑna/ ‘I’, /heˑna/ ‘here’. Another four occurrences containing the diphthong /aj/, i.e. /ʔaˑj.wa/ ‘yes’, /ʃu.waˑj.ja/ ‘some, few’, /ʕab.ba.siˑj.ja/ ‘cuckoo, crazy’, might also be explained based on the Italian phonological background:
The diphthongs with falling sonority behave phonotactically very much like long vowels. Italian syllables do not have long vowels if they are closed by a consonant. As emphasized above, long vowels are restricted to stressed open syllables. There are also no syllables closed by a consonant (sonorant, coronal fricative, or first part of a geminate) that contain a diphthong that ends in a high glide (Krämer 2009: 52).
The rest of occurrences, though, cannot be justified on the basis of Italian phonotactics.
The situation in the Turkish characters’ register is more complex. Vowel lengthening occurs less in this register, namely 11 times. Still, we would expect none since stress in Turkish is not correlated with vowel length. Nevertheless, some cases may be justified on another basis. In two cases, vowel lengthening is correlated with degemination of the consonant that constitutes the coda of the tonic syllable and the onset of the following one: /mu.ɣaˑ.ni/ ‘singer’ and /biˑ.di/ ‘modal of desire’ for EA /mu.ɣan.ni/ ‘singer’ and /bid.di/ (see Hinds & Badawi 1986: 632 and 929 respectively). I suggest that vowel lengthening here is, somehow, intended to maintain syllable weight, otherwise it would become light.
Other four cases are correlated with stress shift: two rightward, i.e. /in.kɑˈsɑˑr/ ‘it got broken’ and /ʔifˈhaˑm/ ‘understand! (SM)’; and two leftward, i.e. /ʔiˑtˈta.faʔ.na/ ‘we agreed’ and /ˈmɑˑẓ.buṭ/ ‘exactly’ for EA /inˈkɑ.sɑr/, /ˈʔif.ham/, /ʔit.taˈfaʔ.na/ and /mɑẓˈbuuṭ/. I suggest that is intended to underline the unusual stress shift in these cases (vide infra).
Table 8
Perceptible vowel lengthening by different linguistic communities
Total Greeks Turks Italians
139 110 (80%) 11 (7%) 18 (13%)
Another feature related to word stress is the stress shift, which is exclusive to the register of the actors playing the role of Turks and that of Egyptians interacting with Turks in the form of FT. Stress shift in this register is of two types: a) without changing vowel quantity; and b) changing the vowels quantity in the tonic syllable and, eventually, the pretonic ones.
As a matter of fact, the stress in Turkish, either Ottoman or Modern, falls mostly on the final syllable. For OT, Hagopian (1907: 23) states that “usually every [Ottoman]
Turkish word is accented on the last syllable” and, for TR, Göksel & Kerslake (2005: 26) affirm likewise that “most roots in Turkish (including all polysyllabic verbal roots and some loan words) are stressable on the final syllable”. That is also applied to lexical borrowings. Moreover, words from Arabic (and Persian) with long vowels maintain the length of these vowels even though stress falls on the final syllable (Hagopian 1907: 23).
The first type of stress shift occurs frequently. We find in our corpus 477 cases of stress shift (in 249 unique words). Such stress shift occurs in all lexical categories and, in all occurrences, it is shifted rightmost:
• Nouns: /daˈhab/ ‘gold’, /mamlaˈka/ ‘kingdom’, /mustaʃˈfa/ ‘hospital’, /qahˈwa/
‘coffee’, /saˈna/ ‘year’, /ʕaaʔiˈla/ ‘family’.
• Modified nouns: /benˈti/ ‘my daughter’, /bajˈtek/ ‘your (s.m.) home’, /ʕajnuˈkym/
‘your (p.) eyes/ /tooˈruh/ ‘his bull’, /ʕɑẓɑmɑtˈhɑ/ ‘her greatness’.
• Proper nouns: /Amiiˈna/ ‘Amīna’, /Hoˈda/ ‘Hudā’, /Kɑɑˈẓim/ ‘Kāẓim’, /Nɑɑˈhid/
‘Nāhid’, /Rosˈtum/ ‘Rostum’, /Xadiiˈʒa/ ‘Ḫadīǧa’, /ʒoˈħa/ ‘Ǧoḥā’.
• Pronouns: /ʔaˈna/ ‘I’, /ʔinˈta/ ‘you (s.m.)’, /ʔinˈti/ ‘you (s.f.)’, /ʔanˈtum/ ‘you (p.)’.
• Adjectives: /momˈkin/ ‘possible’, /bɑɑˈhiẓ/ ‘expensive’, /faaˈriɣ/ ‘empty’, /ɣaˈbi/
‘stupid’, /ʔisˈwid/ ‘black’.
• Adverbs: /ħaaˈlan/ ‘immediately’, /ʔabaˈdan/ ‘never’, /ʒuwˈwa/ ‘inside’, bɑrˈrɑ/
‘outside’, /heˈna/ ‘here’, /saˈva~saˈwa/ ‘together’.
• Verbs: /ʔa-aˈkul/ ‘I eat’, /fɑkˈkɑr/ ‘he thought’, /faaˈtit/ ‘she passed’, /kalˈlim/ ‘speak out! (s.m.)’.
• Address terms: /ʔafanˈdi/ ‘efendi’, /ʔafanˈdim/ ‘(my) sir’, /ħɑẓrɑtiˈna/ ‘our excellency (pluralis majestatis)’, /ħɑẓrɑtikˈum/ ‘your excellency’.
• Interjection: /jɑlˈlɑ/ ‘come on!, get on!’, /ʃukˈrɑn/ ‘thanks!’, /ʕafˈwan/ ‘not at all, you're welcome’, /ʔajˈvat/ ‘yes’, /ʔiˈzan/ ‘so’.
It is worth mentioning that this stress shift does not affect the vowels’ length even in the pretonic syllables, as we can see in some of the above-mentioned examples. That is not the case in EA, where long vowels occur only in stressed syllables (Woidich 2006a: 10).55
Additionally, this type of stress shift occurs as well in the register of Egyptians speaking with Turkish characters in the form of FT, i.e. /ʔasˈwad/, /ʔafanˈdim/, /Goˈħa/, /ħɑẓretˈkum/ and /ʕaaˈviz/ ‘modal of desire’.
Table 9
Stress shift by Turkish characters versus Egyptian characters interacting with them in the form of FT
Turks Egyptian FT Tokens ca. 11,500 ca. 700 Stress shift without vowel length change 477 (4.1%) 9 (1.3%) Stress shift with vowel length change 315 (2.7%) 50 (7.1%)
The second type of stress shift is accompanied with doubling the tonic vowel length and implies, usually, a morphological impact—at least as perceived by the Egyptian audience. This occurs solely in nouns and adjectives ending, mostly, with the feminine desinence /a/ <SA */a(t)/>. For instance, we find the nouns /dawʃaat/ ‘uproar’ and /fɑlfɑṣɑɑt/ ‘wriggle’ and the adjectives /ħarbejjaat/ ‘pertaining to war, military’ and /mɑfʕuṣɑɑt/ ‘runty’ for the EA /dawʃa/ ‘uproar’, /fɑlfɑṣɑ/ ‘wriggle’, /ħarbejja/ ‘pertaining to war, military (f.)’ and /mɑfʕuuṣɑ/ ‘runty (f.)’ (see Hinds & Badwi 1986: 312, 669, 196, 663 respectively).
This type of stress shift seems more perplexing if we try to explain it on mere phonological basis for several reasons. First, and as mentioned above, stress in Turkish is not correlated with vowel length. Thus there is no need to lengthen the final vowel to
55 There are very few lexicalized exceptions that “are considered to be frozen high-level forms (usually from Standard Arabic), and do not constitute counter-evidence to the rule of unstressed long vowel shortening in Cairene” (Watson 2007: 226–7).
underline the stress shift. Some similar words occur with a shifted stress maintaining the vowel as short as it is in EA, i.e. /daʕˈwat/, /ʒanˈnat/ and /ʔajˈvat/ for the EA /ˈda.ʕwa/
‘invitation’,/ˈgan.na/ ‘paradise’ and /ˈʔa.jwa/ ‘yes’. Furthermore, with few exceptions, the long vowels in pretonic syllables are shortened, i.e. /murgiħaat/ and /milajaat/ for the EA /murgeeħa/ ‘swing’ and /milaaja/ ‘black wrap worn by women in public’ (see Hinds
& Badwi 1986: 815, 834 respectively). Not only this, but vowel shortening in pretonic syllables occurs in several lexemes that coexist in OT, where they maintain the vowels’
length: /ħalawaat/in OT halāvet ‘sweetness’; /fiḍiħɑɑt/in OT fazīhat ‘shame, disgrace, infamy’; /salamaat/ in OT selāmet ‘safety’; and /muwafaqaat/ in OT muwāfaqat
‘agreeing, consenting; assent, consent; a conforming, conformity’ (see Redhouse 1890:
800, 1389, 1070–71, 2020 respectively) which correspond to EA /ħalaawa/, /fiḍiiħɑ/, /salaama/ and /muwafʔa/ (see Hinds & Badawi 1986: 222, 660, 427, 949 respectively).
An attempt to explain this stress shift that entails a change, sometimes multiple, in vowel quantity may be from the other side, i.e. the perception by the Egyptian of the way the Turkish community used to interact in EA.
As a matter of fact, OT had many lexical borrowings from Arabic. Some of these borrowings are feminine and end in Arabic with the feminine desinence /a(t)/. Where the lexical borrowing is a noun, OT has two accommodations regarding the feminine desinence: a) maintaining the final /at/ and transcribed with Arabic grapheme <ت>, i.e.
تيرذ zurriyyet ‘progeny; descendants’ and تلوفط tufūlet ‘infancy, childhood’, or 2) using the Arabic pausal form /a(h)/ and transcribed with Arabic grapheme <هـ> (dotless), i.e.
هكرت terike ‘the estate left by a person at death’ and هلتاقم muqātele ‘mutual fighting, battle’
(see Redhouse 1890: 800, 1242, 537, 1936 respectively). The adjective, instead, is accommodated only using the Arabic pausal form /a(h)/, i.e. هميرك kerīme ‘kind, good, noble, honorable’ and, substantivized, ‘daughter’ (Redhouse 1890: 1543)
Moreover, OT borrowed Arabic lexemes with their native plurals, both external (ǧam‘
sālim) and internal (ǧam‘ taksīr): “Ottoman had borrowed a number of nouns from Arabic with their suffixal plural feminine form on -a:t. […] The so-called broken plural of Arabic, formed by inserting vowels into the root, was also borrowed into Ottoman”
(Kornfilt 1997: 269). The peculiarity of the lexical borrowings from Arabic into OT went beyond the plural forms:
Arabic and Persian borrowings were not confined to the lexicon, but included grammatical elements also. Arabic words were often used in their distinctive plural forms, and adjectives were made to agree with them in terms of gender, as they would in Arabic itself (Göksel & Kerslake 2005:
ix).
Kāmil (1896: 43), though, affirms that this practice “occurs mostly in writing” while in Turkish, generally, “adjective whether used as a predicate or as an attribute, remains unchanged” (Hagopian 1907: 75).
Additionally, although Turkish has -lAr as “the only native and productive plural suffix” with two reflexes -ler and -lar depending on the vowel harmony role (Kornfilt 1997: 268), the Arabic external feminine plural ending seems to have been productive in OT. It formed the plural of native Turkish words, i.e. كلتفچ (pl. تاكلتفچ) çiftlik ‘farm’, and even of borrowings from Persian, i.e. زبس (pl. تاوزبس) sebz ‘green, vegetable’ (see Kāmil 1896: 43 and Redhouse 1890: 723, 1035). This, to some extent, justifies why the Arabic āt in OT became productive, though not common, its reproduce being analogous to the Turkish plural desinence.
Thus, we expect to hear more words ending in /at/ and /aat/ in the speech of the Turks, interacting either in Turkish or in EA. It is not surprising that we find such words in Turks’
codeswitching: haybetüllah la‘netüllah ‘God’s disgrace!’; rahmetüllah ‘God’s mercy!’;
şefakat ‘compassion’; merhamet ‘mercy’; şahsiyyet ‘personality, person’; memnûniyyet
‘pleasure’; hazret ‘title for an exalted personage’; teşekkürât ‘thanks!’; mübâhasât
‘discussions’; hayevanât ‘animals’; teşerrüfât’ ‘honors’.
To the Egyptian ear, words with final /-at/, especially when stressed, sound more to have the plural ending /aat/ rather than the feminine ending, which has two allomorphs in EA, /-a(h)/ and, only in construct state, /-it/. Some ambiguous contexts where a word may be either singular or plural could have emphasized this perception. That led, probably, to a convention that Turks confuse between Arabic singular and plural. In fact, quite often in the corpus, we find the word /waaħid/ preceding one of these words to underline its being singular, i.e. /waaħid wardaat/ ‘one flower, a flower’ and /vaaħid ʒomʕaat/ ‘one week, a week’.
To sustain the belief that this type of stress shift in the register of Turkish characters is learned, probably, from Egyptians through their interacting with Turks in the form of FT are the following reasons:
• This type of stress shift occurs much more in the register of Egyptian characters speaking in the form of FT: in about 700 words constituting 70 interactions in the form of FT with Turkish characters we find over 50 cases of stress shift with change in vowels quantity, that is, 7% of all words, while in the register of the Turkish characters themselves instead, it occurs 315 times (200 unique words) in nearly 11,500 words constituting 1,300 interactions, that is, 2.7% of the total words.56
• The final syllable in EA is stressed only whenever contains a long vowel or a long consonant, i.e. CVV, CVVC and CVCC (see Watson 2007: 80–1). But in OT it is stressed unconditionally. For instance, the singular zurriyyet ‘offspring’ with a short vowel in its final syllable and its plural zurriyyāt with a long one are both stressed. Vowel lengthening in this type of stress shift is a precondition to give more weight to the final syllable in EA, not in OT.
• In 153 occurrences where there is a long vowel before shifting the stress rightmost, this long vowel is preserved in only 11 of them and shortened in 142. For instance, the EA lexeme /salaama/ <*SA salāma(t)> occurs four times with stress shift to final syllable lengthening its vowel, once with the middle long vowel preserved /sa.laaˈmaat/ and three times with the middle long vowel shortened /sa.laˈmaat/. Shortening the long vowels left of the stressed syllable is an EA phonotactic rule (see Woidich 2006b: 326 and Watson 2007: 226). That is not the case in Turkish where word stress is not correlated with vowel length (vide supra). Not only this, but even among the occurrences of this type of stress shift we find such lexemes; /ħu.kuˈmaat/, /ħa.laˈwaat/, /zi.jɑˈrɑɑt/, /saˈʕaat/ and /ṭu.fuˈlɑɑt/ for the EA /ħuˈkuu.ma/, /ħaˈlaa.wa/, /ziˈjɑɑ.rɑ/, /ˈsaa.ʕa/ and /ṭuˈfuu.lɑ/ (see Hinds & Badawi 1986: 218, 222, 385, 391, 541 respectively), while they exist in OT with long vowels left of the stressed syllable; hukymet ‘government’, halāvet ‘sweetness’, ziyāret ‘visit’, sā‘at ‘hour, time’ and tufūlet ‘infancy, childhood’ (Redhouse 1890: 798, 800, 1021, 1028, 1242 respectively).
• The occurrences of this type of stress shift reveal more knowledge of Arabic—either EA or SA—than Turkish, contrary to what we expect from an EA-speaking Turkish community. First, many of the nouns with stress shift exist in Turkish without the final /t/, i.e. /dahˈjaat/ in OT dāhiye ‘calamity’, /ʕa.ʔiˈlaat/ in OT ‘ā’ile ‘family’, /ʕɑ.ruˈsɑɑt/
in OT ‘arūse ‘bride’, /fatˈħaat ~ fa.tiˈħaat/ fātiha ‘the first chapter of the Qur’ān’ and
56 The number would be seen better if compared to those of the first type, i.e. stress shift without changing vowel quantity: nine occurrences in the register of Egyptian interacting in form of FT (1.3%) with respect to 477 occurrences in the register of the Turkish characters (4%).
/vɑ.ẓiˈfaat/ in OT vazīfe ‘incumbent duty’ (Redhouse 1890: 886, 1280, 1296, 1358, 2141 respectively). Second, several adjectives with stress shift exist in Turkish and all, as mentioned above, are without a final /t/. Third, some of the lexemes are lexical borrowings from OT into EA and they do not have a final /t/ in their source form:
• /ʔoˈdɑɑt/ in EA <ةضوأ ~ وأةد > /ˈʔoo.ḍɑ/ from OT oda ‘room’;
• /bamˈjaat/ in EA <ةيماب> /ˈba.mja/ from OT bamye ~ bamya ‘okra’;
• /bu.ɣaˈʃaat/ in EA <ةشاغب> /buˈɣaa.ʃa/ from OT bughacha ‘turkish typical cake’;
• /sɑ.rɑˈjaat/ in EA <ةيارس> /sɑˈrɑɑ.jɑ/ from OT serāy ‘palace’
(see Redhouse 1890: 255, 336, 402, 1048 and Hinds & Badawi 1986: 43, 104, 88, 391, 406 respectively).57
Table 10
Distribution of unique lexemes with stress shift entailing vowel length change in the Turkish characters’ register
Nouns Adjectives Total
Not common to Turkish 32 3 35
Common to Turkish 140 25 165
ending -t not ending -t not
of Arabic origin 54 (of 129) 75 (of 129) 0 25 154 of Turkish origin 0 (of 7) 7 (of 7) — — 7
Common loanwords 0 (of 4) 4 (of 4) — — 4
Finally, several times more than one stress shift of this type occurs together and, usually, accompanied by other words ending in /-at/ or /-aat/. In the first example of (9.a) we find the singular /wɑẓiifɑ/ realized twice as if it were a plural /vɑẓifaat/, modified by adjectives /muħtɑrɑmɑɑt/ and /sahlaat/, which sound plural as well, due to the stress shift with the final syllable vowel lengthening. Similarly, we find in the second example, /fikrɑɑt najjirɑɑt/ and /taktikaat ħarbejjaat/. The latter plural is, semantically, passable but its adjective, instead, has no need to agree in number. The verbal noun /ʔintiẓɑrɑɑt/ also sounds plural although there is no need for that as it is used in place of the verb.58 The word /lɑħɑẓɑɑt/ is undoubtedly plural, and does not only sound plural because of stress
57 Hinds & Badawi ascribe a Turkish origin only to /ʔooḍɑ/ and /buɣaaʃa/, a Persian origin to /sɑrɑɑjɑ/
and no foreign origin to /bamja/. I believe that /sɑrɑɑjɑ/, though being ultimately Persian, passed to EA through OT.
58 The use of the verbal noun to act as a verb occurs several times in the register of Turkish characters. In Ot, the the native auxiliary verb كمتيا itmek is “used with Arabic and Persian verbal nouns to form Turkish complex verbs” (Redhouse 1890: 288). Thus, for instance, كمتيا راظتنا intizār itmek means ‘to wait’. The practice of using the verbal noun as verb is a calque on this phrase, without the OT native
shift. With stress shift accompanied by vowel lengthening, it should be /lɑħẓɑɑt/. To ask someone to wait in EA, the singular is preferred in this case: /ʔistanna lɑħẓɑ, sania, diʔiiʔa/ ‘wait a moment, second, minute!’. The same can be said for /ʔiʃɑrɑɑt/. The plural is unnecessary. Finally, /qɑvɑntɑɑt/ is a hyper-correction of the EA /ʔɑwɑntɑ/, which is in turn from avanta (see Atalay 1999: 1941) and in EA is always singular (see Hinds &
Badawi 1986: 45).
We find the same in the register of Egyptian characters interacting with Turkish characters in the form of FT (9.b). In addition, we see in the first two examples the use of /waaħid/ ‘one, a’ to underline that the noun is singular not plural. In the third example, we see an erroneous plural, /xɑṭibɑɑt/ for ‘fiancé’, as well, where a masculine noun of an animated being is set in plural with the external feminine plural.
(9.a) KāẓimTR: laqeena vɑẓifaat muħtɑrɑmaat vɑẓifaat sahlaat we found job.PL respectful.PL.F job.PL easy.PL.F
“I’ve got a respectable job, an easy job.”
Šākir AġāTR: Imtisaal haanim! ʔintiẓɑrɑɑt lɑħɑẓɑɑt! xɑṭɑrɑt-li Imtisāl lady waiting.PL moment.PL came to mind fikrɑɑt najjirɑɑt sa-ʔa-ʕmal maʕa Fawzi idea.PL luminous.PL I will make with Fawzi
paşa taktikaat ħarbejjaat wa ʃoɣlə
pasha tactic.PL military.PL and work
pasha tactic.PL military.PL and work