Beschreibung
The necessity of studying Arabic dialects has attracted more
attention in the recent years. Qatar University chose to
support the growing academic interest and research in the
field by hosting the Association Internationale de
Dialectologie Arabe (AIDA) conference on 11 – 13 November
2013.
The AIDA10 conference and the tenth volume of AIDA
proceedings show that a good deal of change and development
in the field is occurring. Fewer papers deal on hitherto
unknown dialects as the white spots on the map of Arabic
dialects have significantly shrunk. More papers focus on
syntactical issues because we now possess more and larger
text collections. Papers using “change” in their titles
indicate that Arabic dialectology has a long history.
Perhaps the time has come to re-examine the studies of the
1940s, 50s and 60s concerning the dialects of certain
regions.
Muntasir Fayez Al-Hamad is Assistant
Professor of Arabic for Non-Arabic Speakers at Qatar
University.
Rizwan Ahmad is Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics at
Qatar University.
Hafid Alaoui is Associate Professor of Arabic Linguistics at
Qatar University.
