Skip to content
EntityQ4115740· pop 11· linked from 195 articles

(also ; ) is a phenomenon in Arabic comprising the fronting and raising of Old Arabic toward or , and the old short toward . and the factors conditioning its occurrence were described for the first time by Sibawayh. According to as-Sirafi and Ibn Jinni (10th century), the vowel of the was pronounced somewhere between and , suggesting a realization of .

~7 min read

Article

15 sections
Contents
  • ''Imāla'' in the grammatical tradition
  • ''i''-mutation
  • III-''w/y imāla''
  • II-''w/y imāla''
  • ''Imāla'' in Quranic recitation
  • Lexically determined ''i''-mutation
  • III-''w/y imāla''
  • II-''w/y imāla''
  • ''Imāla'' in modern Arabic dialects
  • ''i''-mutation
  • III-''w/y imāla''
  • Consonantally conditioned medial ''imāla''
  • Effect on other languages
  • See also
  • References

(also ; ) is a phenomenon in Arabic comprising the fronting and raising of Old Arabic toward or , and the old short toward . and the factors conditioning its occurrence were described for the first time by Sibawayh. According to as-Sirafi and Ibn Jinni (10th century), the vowel of the was pronounced somewhere between and , suggesting a realization of .

Sibawayh primarily discusses as a shift of to in the vicinity of or , an allophonic variation that can be characterized as umlaut or i-mutation. Additionally, Sibawayh's subsumes occurrences of a phonemic vowel resulting from the collapse of Old Arabic triphthongs. For this reason, not all instances of can be characterized as a vowel shift from an original towards the .

Connections

Categories