Stephan Procházka

© Gisela Procházka-Eisl

What is bedouin-type Arabic?   Arabic is among the most widely spoken languages in the world. It is special in that no other language in the world is spoken over such a huge contiguous territory for such a long period. An important feature of Arabic is the observable impact of large-scale migrations of nomadic groups over extensive areas and periods. Though the contrast between the nomads and the town and village dwellers is of crucial importance for the history and economy of the Arabic speaking Middle East and North Africa, its linguistic impact is still insufficiently understood.   Together with a team of collaborators from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Stephan Procházka will investigate the linguistic differences between originally nomadic and sedentary people, i.e. one of the key concepts in the history of the Arabic language and the grouping of its contemporary spoken varieties. They will provide new data from under-researched Arabic varieties and investigate linguistic attitudes towards bedouin-type dialects on the basis of five case-studies with different social and geographical settings. Another research topic is the impact of social settings, particularly tribal and patriarchal structures, as possible factors for the linguistic conservatism of contemporary bedouin-type Arabic.