THE DEVELOPMENT OF CLASSICAL ARABIC: THE CASE OF KAŠKAŠA, KASKASA AND ŠANŠANA

Abstract

This article explores the manner by which Classical Arabic sounds emerged. It makes the claim that sounds came to be standardized through a process of selection based on prestige. It also claims that the sounds of the Hijaz region were considered prestigious and were therefore selected as Classical Arabic in the 4th/10th century. The article tracks the position of the kaškaša, kaskasa, šanšana in the grammatical literature and traces its development to show that they were moved from accepted variants to less acceptable to bad variants to the advantage of the Hijazi /k/ variant. The article then shows that the variants under study were more geographically and demographically widespread. But prestige of Hijaz region in the 4th/10th century was more powerful than the established grammatical rule of preferring the more common variant over the less common variant.