Surveying Patterns of Noun Plural in Jibbāli

Abstract

In Jibbāli, noun plurals exhibit two types of plural markers with numerous phonological alternations. There are nouns with explicit plural suffixes, nouns with internal change, plurals with a suffix and change combined, nouns taking a template and plurals with two suffixes combined. Due to Jibbāli's phonological peculiarities affecting the plural, proliferation in plural patterns is expected. For example, a deleted b in a singular decides to reoccur in the plural, assigning a distinct plural pattern. Being in contact with Arabic, due to physical proximity, Jibbāli borrowed internal plural forms from Arabic and imposed intriguing alternations into them,. For example, Jibbāli's Vb infixed plurals historically derive from the Arabic plural infix -wa:-. This is another reason for the multiplicity of plural patterns in the language. Jibbāli plurality is also characterized by doubly and triply marked plurals. For example, some Jibbāli singular forms take double plural markers (i.e. suffixation and Vb infixation together or two suffixes consecutively following one another).This study is a linguistic attempt to document the diverse patterns of noun plurals in Jibbāli, a critically understudied language in the literature to date. It uncovers plural patterns that are unique to the language, revealing historical and phonetic affiliations to Arabic, Modern South Arabian and Semitic.

Keywords

• Arabic
• Jibbāli
• plural