أسماء الإشارة في اللّهجة الفلسطينيّة: دراسة صوتيّة دلاليّة

Abstract

This grammatical-lexical study focuses on analyzing Palestinian dialects, particularly in terms of demonstrative pronouns. It examines how the Palestinian use of demonstrative pronouns differs from classical Arabic in terms of phonetics, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary. Unlike previous studies, this research specifically delves into the grammatical-lexical linguistic aspects of demonstrative pronouns, highlighting their significance within the context of different Palestinian dialects. The study employs a combination of descriptive and analytical approaches to explore all the demonstrative pronouns used by Palestinians, including recordings of oral interviews with elderly generations. Additionally, it looks at how the oral and written forms of these demonstrative pronouns vary between the different Palestinian dialects. While most demonstrative pronouns are pronounced similarly across the different dialects, the word hunāk (meaning ‘there’) is pronounced differently depending on the speaking group. Often, the difference in pronunciation is accompanied by a change in vowels and letters– shortening or swapping vowels/letters, for example, replacing the kāf  (the sound ‘k’) with qāf (the sound ‘q’). In addition, while most demonstrative pronouns are spelt differently in the different dialects, they all share the common starting letter h. This is because many Palestinian dialects still use Canaanite demonstrative pronouns, such as hān (meaning ‘here’). Nevertheless, the way Palestinians conjugate demonstrative pronouns in sentences aligns with the conjugation rules of classical Arabic.