ABSTRACT
Comparison o f the d ia le c ts o f inner Arabia w ith those o f the outer fr in g e , namely Mesopotamia and the G u lf, rev ea ls a marked g en e ra lis a t io n : that the outer d ia le c ts , and more p a r t ic u la r ly those o f Mesopotamia, have reduced a number o f con trasts s t i l l ex tan t in the d ia le c ts o f the in t e r io r . These operate a t the grammatical, m orphological and phono lo g ic a l le v e ls , and in some cases, such as that o f the verb t r a n s i t iv i t y system, i t may in vo lve more than one le v e l a t a tim e. In the main i t i s more accurate to regard the process as one o f s im p lif ic a t io n than one o f redu ction , since the a b i l i t y o f the language to make grammatical d is t in c t io n s is not reduced, but the method o f doing i t i s s im p lif ie d . I l lu s tra t iv e o f th is is the e lim in a tion o f the s o -ca lled " in te rn a l pass ive " in the ou ter d ia le c ts . In these the con t ra s t between /nisad/ "he asked" and /nsid/ "he was asked" i s rep laced by the forms/.nisad/ "he asked" and /innisad/ "he was asked". Here the process o f p r e f ix in g , which is the more genera l ve rb a l in f le c t io n process in the d ia le c ts , r e p laces the process o f in te rn a l vowel and s y lla b le m od ifica t io n , which is not presen t to the same degree elsewhere in the verb system. The process o f reduction can be seen to proceed along the parameters o f id e n t i f ic a t io n or contact w ith the Najd or the ou ter reg ion s , as ou tlin ed in Ch. 1. In gen era l the most con servative d ia le c ts are those o f Najd, whether o f the Northern or C entral type. Somewhat le s s con s e rva tiv e in some fea tu res are the d ia le c ts o f the bedouin o f the Syrian d e s e r t , fo llow ed by the badiya d ia le c ts o f Ira q . The le a s t conservative are those o f the r iv e r in e population o f Iraq and the Gulf towns.
