This thesis provides an extensive overview of the main linguistic features of coastal Dhofārī Arabic, the southern-most governorate in the Sultanate of Oman, and in particular the historical Arabic-speaking communities found on its coastal plain. The study is subdivided into key sections on phonology, morphology, local and temporal relations, adverbs and particles, and syntax. It also examines some of the features identified by these sections in a separate chapter on grammaticalization theory, seeking to explain the diachronic development of function words, as well as their synchronic usage in coastal Dhofārī Arabic today. A brief lexicon is given, based on the Wortatlas der arabischen Dialekte / Word Atlas of Arabic Dialects (WAD) semantic lexical categories, and supplemented with further lexical data from questionnaire and free speech recordings. The study finds that coastal Dhofārī Arabic shares common features with the Arabic dialects spoken in neighbouring Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and with the northern Arabic dialects of the Sultanate of Oman. It preserves the voiced and voiceless interdental phonemes /θ/, and /ð/, retains the voiceless uvular plosive /q/, and demonstrates variable levels of the vowel raising feature Imāla, which is found in other coastal communities within Arabia. Morphologically, it is typical of northern Omani Arabic dialects by its retention of more complex patterns of feminine plural agreement, both for human referents and for non-human referents. It exhibits feminine plural agreement for personal and demonstrative pronouns, and in the latter there are two separate forms of the pronoun which may indicate traces of a more complex, historical gender and number agreement system. These conservative agreement patterns are also found with verb inflection, where coastal Dhofāri still retains the plural feminine inflection morphology. Unlike the northern Arabic dialects of Oman, this dialect retains only vestiges of the ablaut passive voice, similar to that of its closest neighbouring dialect of Yemeni Arabic in Wadi Ḥaḍramawt, with which there are also strong historical relations. In terms of grammaticalization, this dialect has prominent tense / aspect / and mood verbal prefixes such as the /bi-/ continuous aspect verb prefix, the /bā-/ future marker, and the particles /ʕād/ and /qad/, in common with southern Arabian dialects extending into the Saudi Arabian Nejd, and also with some of the Modern South Arabian Languages. Its use of the analytic genitive possessive linkers /ḥaqq/ and /māl/ are notably more prominent that was previously thought, and warrant further investigation into their functional, grammatical roles. Despite the rich array of features found in this dialect, it faces strong pressure from MSA, and many of the original communities that spoke this dialect have been resettled as part of regional development since the 1970s. It is hoped therefore that this account of CDA will generate interest in its future study as well.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 358-366). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

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The unusual way in which Britain's empire in Arabia was connected politically and constitutionally to the metropole, and the perceived – in some instances exaggerated – view of its strategic and economic importance, created both an opportunity and a justification for the British disengagement from the region to happen differently than in most of the rest of the empire. Strong personalities – in the metropole, amongst the men on the spot, and among local elites – played a crucial role in decision-making, and this thesis argues that informal networks from among these three constituencies worked in parallel to the established formal channels, impacting policy and driving the decision-making process. These networks initially contributed to a break in the political consensus within the metropole, but eventually also helped to restore it. The manipulation of local elites was the tool of choice, used by Britain (under both Conservative and Labour Governments) and its "men on the spot", in their endeavour to secure a lasting privileged position in Arabia. How key actors adapted to change, both in their own societies and in the international system, often determined the success or otherwise of their endeavours. This tangled tale of Britain’s last imperial stand in Arabia is far from being a unique case of how modern empires have handled unusual episodes of imperial retreat. The story has echoes in two other imperial exits of the late 20^th century – the French disengagement from Algeria from 1954 to 1962, and Russian efforts to maintain a privileged position in Georgia, immediately before and after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, and since. Even if it is too early to draw firm conclusions, similar patterns – as the ones discussed in this thesis with regards to the end of the British Empire in Arabia – can also be observed in the other two cases, allowing us to draw some observations and lessons.