New Perspectives on the Urban–Rural Dichotomy and Dialect Contact in the Arabic <i>gələt</i> Dialects in Iraq and South-West Iran

Abstract

This paper reevaluates the ground on which the division into urban and rural gələt dialects, as spoken in Iraq and Khuzestan (south-western Iran), is built on. Its primary aim is to describe which features found in this dialect group can be described as rural and which features tend to be modified or to emerge in urban contexts, and which tend to be retained. The author uses various methodical approaches to describe these phenomena: (i) a comparative analysis of potentially rural features; (ii) a case study of Ahvazi Arabic, a gələt dialect in an emerging urban space; and (iii) a small-scale sociolinguistic survey on overt rural features in Iraqi Arabic as perceived by native speakers themselves. In addition, previously used descriptions of urban gələt features as described for Muslim Baghdad Arabic are reevaluated and a new approach and an alternative analysis based on comparison with new data from other gәlәt dialects are proposed. The comparative analysis yields an overview of what has been previously defined as rural features and additionally discusses further features and their association with rural dialects. This contributes to our general understanding of the linguistic profile of the rural dialects in this geographic context.

Keywords

• dialect classification
• dialect contact
• urban
• rural
• <i>gələt</i>
• <i>qəltu</i>