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Bi-polar terms of address in Kuwaiti Arabic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Mahmoud Aziz F. Yassin
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Extract

Bi-polarity is the use of the same term to denote both speaker and addressee. It is possible to distinguish broadly three types of bi-polar term in Kuwaiti Arabic (KA). The first type is characterized in form by the use of the monolexic kin-terms: /yuba/ ‘father’, /yumma/ ‘mother’, /yaddi/ ‘grandfather’, /yadda/ ‘grandmother’. The second type consists of the vocative particle /ya/ + the KA kin-term for brother /?ax/ + 2nd person pronominal suffix. The third type of KA bi-polar term consists of the joining word /wa/ ‘and’ + the personal pronoun /ana/ ‘I’ + one of the monolexic kin-terms + 2nd person pronominal suffix. In this paper a comparison is made between these three types of bi-polarity exploring the relationship between their respective forms and functions.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 1977 , pp. 297 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1977

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References

1 Millicent R. Ayoub says, ‘… this asymmetry could have been corrected in two ways: the senior (viz. the father) could have addressed his son wildi ‘my son’ and be called wildi' my son’ in return, but the Arabic case takes the other alternative and balances the two on the higher generational level. Equals are made by promoting the junior rather than by downgrading the senior', in Lunt, H. G. (ed.), ‘Bi-polarity in Arabic kinship terms’, Proceedings of the ninth International Congress of Linguistics, The Hague, 1964, 1103.Google Scholar

2 For the reading conventions used in this paper (except // and /?/), see Yassin, , Forms of address in Kuwaiti colloquial Arabic, Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1975.Google Scholar I am very grateful to Professor T. F. Mitchell for his guidance throughout the period of that study. The following are some of the works that discuss the phonology of Kuwaiti Arabic: Johnstone, T. M., ‘Further studies on the Dōsiri dialect of Arabic as spoken in Kuwait’, BSOAS, XXVII, 1, 1964, 77–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The sound change j > y in the Arabic dialects of peninsular Arabia’, BSOAS, XXVIII, 2, 1965, 233–41Google Scholar; idem, Eastern Arabian dialect studies, London, 1967Google Scholar; Matar, A., Khaṣā'is al-lahja al-kuwaytiyya, Kuwait University Press, 1969Google Scholar; idem, Min asrār al-lahja al-kuwaytiyya, KUP, 1970.Google Scholar

3 cf. Johnstone, T. M., Eastern Arabian dialect studies, 176–7, 240.Google Scholar In fact, the vocative particle /ya/ and the 2nd person suffix are mutually exclusive elsewhere, for example, */ya wildik (-c) ‘Your brother !’, */ya xạ:lik(-c)/ ‘Your uncle!’, etc. are inadmissible patterns in KA.

4 cf. Weinreich, U., ‘Problems in the analysis of idioms’, in Puhvel, J. (ed.), Substance and structure in language, Berkeley, 1969, 23–81.Google Scholar

5 cf. Ayoub, , art. cit., 1104.Google Scholar

6 Ayoub, , art. cit., 1104.Google Scholar

7 Ayoub, , art. cit., 1106.Google Scholar