ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will discuss the general linguistic features and structural trends that set Arabic in the post-conquest diaspora apart from both the Classical and pre-Classical varieties on the one hand and the pre-Islamic dialects on the other hand. These trends are unfortunately very few. But, at the same time, they are derived from a scattered body of linguistic features, as we have seen in Chapter 9 . This is the main reason why scholars of the history of Arabic produced the incomplete and sometimes weak theories we discussed in the previous chapter. This chapter, therefore, is an extension of the previous one. Throughout the chapter, examples from different dialects will be given in order to use the notion of geographical distribution to make some claims about trends that may have started in pre-Islamic times and trends that came about by means of contact or second language acquisition.
