Kiegel-Keicher

Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Romanisches Seminar » Spanische Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft » Prof. Dr. Georg Bossong » Kiegel-Keicher

Completed research project

Title / Titel	Phonetics and phonology of arabisms in the Iberoromance languages
PDF	Abstract (PDF, 14 KB)
Original title / Originaltitel	Phonetik und Phonologie der iberoromanischen Arabismen
Summary / Zusammenfassung	During the Islamic era on the Iberian Peninsula (711−1492), the Iberoromance languages borrowed numerous Hispano-Arabic words. These loanwords have been fully integrated into the phonetic systems of the target languages. Considerable phonetic differences can be observed by comparing an arabism and its etymon; in many cases the etymon cannot be identified at first sight. The reasons, on the one hand, are the far-reaching differences between the phonetic systems of Arabic and Romance and the resulting mechanisms of adaptation which occur during the act of borrowing. On the other hand, the loanword followed the phonetic development of the target language during centuries, so that it deviated more and more from its etymon. These circumstances, together with the precarious testimony of the medieval sources, particularly the rare Hispano-Arabic ones, turn Arabo-Romance etymology especially difficult. The aim of this project is to analyse and systematise the phonetic and phonological transformations which act upon the borrowed lexemes on the basis of the ancient Iberoromance and Hispano-Arabic sound systems. An additional aid will be the inclusion of the modern Moroccan dialect. Both the application of recent knowledge about these two Arabic dialects and of latest phonological theory on a subject of long tradition will allow new findings, which were not yet possible in Arnald Steiger’s pioneer work Contribución a la fonética del hispano-árabe y de los arabismos en el ibero-románico y el siciliano published in 1932. The results will contribute to etymological research in the field of Iberoromance linguistic history, in particular, and to a better unterstanding of the laws of phonetic adaptation of loanwords, in general.
Keywords / Suchbegriffe	Al-Andalus, Iberoromance, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Arabic, Arabic loanwords, phonetics, phonology
Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte	Dr. Yvonne Kiegel-Keicher (Project Leader) y.kiegel@gmx.de
Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch	SNF (Personen- und Projektförderung)
Duration of Project / Projektdauer	Jun 2002 to Dec 2006