Abstract
Aims and objectives:
The nature of the effect of language contact has been a source for extensive investigation in the linguistic field. More specifically, the case of reborrowing, that is, the shift from language A to language B and then cyclically back to language A, often involving a change in meaning and/or form, has been a source for extensive interest. In this paper, we examined the word
Methodology and data:
We used the Lisān al-ʿArab (لسان العرب, ‘Tongue of Arabs’) dictionary for the etymological investigation in Arabic,1 the corpus of the Quran for historical Arabic data, scripts and poems from the Mamluk Arabic period for the Middle Ages’ Arabic data,2 and for contemporary spoken Arabic, we used a corpus of 100 random WhatsApp messages of Israeli Arab Bedouin students (such usage exists in all Palestinian Arabic dialects). For the Hebrew data, we used the Israeli Historical Jpress Corpus3 and the Hebrew Historical Maagarim corpus;4 and finally, for contemporary Hebrew data, we used 100 random examples from the hetenten corpus.5
Analysis:
We found a reborrowing ‘ping pong effect’, from classical Arabic to 20th-century Hebrew, and in the contemporary 21st century back to Spoken Palestinian Arabic. We also found a phonetic change from Classical Arabic ṣabāba صَباَبة to Contemporary Arabic sababa صبابا. A similar phonetic change occurred in Hebrew, from sabaaba סבאבה to sababa סבבה. Thus, this was not a diachronic shift from Classical Arabic to Spoken Arabic, but rather the classical Arabic word was borrowed into Hebrew and then, in a ‘ping-pong’ reborrowing shift, went back to spoken Arabic. This process involved mechanisms of metonymy, bridging contexts, and lexicalization.
Conclusions:
While language contact does motivate and affect change, it does not necessarily occur through internal changes exhibited in the target language itself but rather can be transferred back, in a cyclical fashion, to the original language. These results focused on a bilingual community, shedding additional light on the nature of linguistic processes of reborrowing and language contact.
Introduction
One of the most challenging questions regarding semantic-pragmatic change is the effect of language contact; More specifically, does language contact only motivate change, or does it take part in the actual mechanism of change itself? Since languages in contact (e.g., Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic [PA]), typically borrow linguistic features from one another (Aikhenvald, 2002; Amara, 1999; Hawker, 2018; Kheir, 2022), we show that while language contact does motivate and affect change, it does not only take part in internal changes exhibited in the target language itself. That internal change, in turn, can later be exhibited back in the source language as well or in one of its dialects, as both classical and spoken languages are involved. In addition, as language-contact change works according to more general principles of linguistic change, such as grammaticalization (Millet, 1912), we shall demonstrate both intra- and inter-language changes. Thus, we claim, language contact creates meaning change via processes of linguistic recruitment and mobilization of certain forms/functions from language A to language B that in turn undergo internal changes, and then potentially are transferred back to language A (or one of the dialects of A) in a cyclic manner.
Such language-contact-based cyclicity is often referred to in the literature as ‘borrowing into’ (e.g., Watson, 2002). However, reborrowing, or cyclicity of inter-language meaning change raises an additional issue of internal versus inter-language change:
a. Languages can resemble each other in the categories, constructions, types of meaning they use and in the forms that they employ to express them (Aikhenvald, 2002). This means that internal rather than cross-linguistic or ‘universal’ inter-language mechanisms might be claimed to be responsible for linguistic change evident in more than one language. If claimed otherwise, diachronic evidence is in order.
b. Genetically related languages often develop along similar lines (a phenomenon often referred to as ‘parallelism in drift’; see Sapir, 1921). This means that Arabic and Hebrew, which are often considered genetically related languages, might have changed independently rather than via language contact. This point needs to be and will be dealt with in this paper. While similar clines and cycles of change are, in fact, cross-linguistic or even ‘universal’ (see Bardenstein, in press), there are specific phenomena that can be viewed only in a specific community that speaks a specific dialect due to language contact.
Generally speaking, if languages are in contact, then they typically borrow linguistic features from one another and gradually become more like one another (Aikhenvald, 2002). The most pervasive borrowings generally involve construction types, grammatical categories, the organization of lexical and grammatical meanings and grammatical forms – a process defined by Heine and Kuteva (2002) as ‘grammatical replication’. But the most common language contact feature discussed in the literature is that of ‘loanwords’, and those in turn typically fall into two categories:
a. Learned loanwords: loanwords pertaining to specialized fields (like medicine or law).
b. Popular loanwords: everyday functional loanwords.
Often, loanwords assimilate so well into the target language that they do not seem to be loanwords anymore. For example, the word lemon originated in Arabic but is not perceived as a loanword anymore,
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and tart originated in French but has become ingrained in various languages. But language-contact-based change can also be cyclic in the sense that language A may affect language B inter-lingually, but then the affected language B may change internally, which in turn could affect language A back again. This is the case we will focus on presently: Classical Arabic ṣabāba (originally a noun meaning ‘longing’) travelled into Israeli Hebrew (IH) and changed its meaning into: ‘great fun/celebration’ (this meaning is evident from late 1960s and early 1970s). Then, in the 21st century a ‘new’ sababa changed into a versatile discourse marker in contemporary Hebrew
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(especially that of exclamative approval or agreement ‘of course!’) and that change, in turn, travelled back into Contemporary PA as well. It is a marvellous ping-pong effect
All in all, while language contact interlingually motivates meaning change, potentially in a cyclic manner, it does not necessarily motivate internal processes of meaning change that in turn occur due to intrinsic mechanisms of grammaticalization (see Hopper & Traugott, 2003) that is, language-contact-based mobilized items are subject to the target language patterns of change (once ‘in the system’) just as any other items of the language or dialect intrinsically are.
Functional language contact in Israel
Language contact in a bilingual country such as Israel has been extensively investigated (see, most notably, Henkin, 2011). Since a significant proportion of the speakers of one language also have some competence in the other, they gradually become more like each other. PA speakers constantly adopt IH items and vice versa (see Henkin, 2011). Henkin also shows that IH and PA have existed side by side for well over a century in extremely close contact, accompanied by ideologically based social-political tension and often violent conflict, between the two communities. PA speakers changed from being a majority to a minority following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, so that nowadays it is IH speakers that form the majority, also representing the dominant contemporary culture. In this paper, we offer a different perspective than ones already taken when it comes to language contact. We will focus on the cyclic, inter-lingual influence of the classical Arabic ṣabāba (originally a noun meaning ‘deep love and longing’) on 20th-century spoken Hebrew, a process followed by an intrinsic (internal) grammaticalization process via bridging/switch contexts within the Hebrew language, turning a new sababa into a multi-functional discourse function marker and speech act in Contemporary Hebrew. That discourse marker, in turn, was reborrowed, shifting cyclically back into Spoken PA, a dialect stemming from Classical Arabic. By conducting a linguistic-historical investigation, we shall dive deep into this marvellous ‘ping-pong’ effect.
Reborrowing and the ‘ping-pong effect’
The terms ‘borrowing’ or ‘(re)borrowing’ are misleading; what is ‘borrowed’ here is never intended to be given back. Rather ‘(re)travelling/(re)transferring’ is a more fitting term in our opinion. But what is ‘reborrowing’ really? Reborrowing in the literature is usually defined as the process where a word or item travels from one language to another and then back to the originating language in a different form or with a different meaning/function (e.g., see Durkin, 2009). While a single shift from one language to another is called a ‘loan’, reborrowing involves more than one such loan, back and forth, where the final target language is the same as the original source language (or at least one of its dialects). In other words, reborrowing is a linguistic process by which a linguistic item travels (is loaned) from one language to another and then back to the originating language, often in a different form or with a different meaning created by the borrowing language. This backward-cycle path of change (language A ↔ language B) can take many forms. For example, English pioneer was borrowed from Middle French in the sense of ‘digger, foot soldier, pedestrian’, then acquired the sense of ‘early colonist, innovator’ in English, subsequently reborrowed into French (Durkin, 2009). In other cases, the English ready-to-wear shifted to French and became prêt-à-porter, only to be reborrowed by English prêt-à-porter (Durkin, 2009). However, the (re)borrowing process can be complicated, and the words or functions might move through different languages before coming back to the originating language. Therefore, we have decided to use the ‘ping-pong effect’ borrowing term – the result of more than one loan, when the final recipient language is the same as the originating one, or at least one of its dialects, receiving the original word back in cyclical manner (see 4):
Cyclicity
Cyclicity, especially when it is pragmatically cognitively driven, has lately caught the attention of various scholars (e.g., Bardenstein, 2023, in press; Hansen, 2018, 2020). More specifically, two main types of cycles have been defined: (1) ‘onomasiological cycles’ versus (2) ‘semasiological cycles’. The former cycle has to do with recurrent recruitment of different items for one specific discursive purpose over time. It focuses on using the initial motivation for change cyclically (see ‘persistence’ al la Bardenstein, 2020). For example, the case of ainz/plutôt and nunc/or/maintenant by Hansen (2021) that were linguistic items replaced by one another over different periods of time as a result of the former source meanings of the older items having been bleached, that is, having undergone semantic-pragmatic change. The second type of cycle involves processes of meaning change of one item through time, usually via processes of constructionalization and grammaticalization. Its essence is recurrent linguistic change of one linguistic item down the course of history to a point where an initial inference (e.g., implicatures) becomes semantic meaning and that semantic meaning can cyclically become even more semantic. For example, Hebrew question-based exclamatives that evolved from rhetorical use of questions via the speaker’s stance (Bardenstein, 2022a), as in the case of ma pito’m, literally: ‘what all of a sudden’, idiomatically: ‘no way’! (see example 1). In addition, implicit negation can become explicit as in the case of Hebrew lo mi yodea ma, literally: ‘not who knows what’, idiomatically ‘not all that’, turning the initially implicit negative speaker’s implicature ‘nobody knows (what)’ arising from the question construction mi yodea ma ‘who knows (what)’ into an intensifier mi yodea ma and finally into a down toner under the scope of the explicit negator lo ‘not’, thus demonstrating a case in which an originally implicit negation turns into an explicit one (see example 2, Bardenstein, 2022b). Another interesting example is the case of Hebrew bilti originally: ‘except for’ that turned the initially implicit negation (except for x = x not) into an explicit one, as a privative (see example 3, Bardenstein, 2023). Last but not least, these latter types of cycles can lead to an even more cyclic phenomenon (a ‘secondary cyclicity’). For example, PA (i)shi ‘a thing’ > ‘not’ and its cyclic recruitment as a minimizer for the same initial purpose of negation strengthening (a case generally referred to as the Jespersen’s cycle (Jespersen, 1917), as in ma baaraf ishi ‘I don’t know anything’ later dropping the explicit negator ma ‘not’, thus creating a spoken Arabic baaraf[
1. a. hirbeta ester lehariš olamot gam al haxanoteha increased.F Esther to.outrage worlds also on preparations.hers šel Miriam linsoa le-America be-xevrat mar Basin: of Miriam to.travel to-America in-company.of Basin keicad? lama? How? why? ‘Esther made a lot of commotion also about Miriam’s preparations to travel to America in the company of Mr. Basin. How? why? [Josef Brenner, Bereavement and failure, 1920:158] b. kše-paniti levakeš tguva mi-misrad roš ha-memšala, when-turned.I to.ask comment from-office head the-government Liran Dan yoec ha-tikšoret kimat saraf li et ha-ozen Liran Dan counsellor the-media almost burned to.me ACC the-ear [Hetenten, 2767587:3162] ‘When I turned to ask for a comment from the PM office, Liran Dan, the media counsellor almost burned my ear: 2. a. ki because mispar yemey xayey hevl-o number day.PL.PROX life.PROX nonsense-POSS.3SG ka- cel ašer mi yagid la-adam like-shadow that who FUT.tell.SG to.DET-man
ma yihiye axar-av taxat ha-šemeš
What FUT.be.3SG after-him under DET-sun [Ecclesiastes 6:12] Literally: ‘For days of nothingness are like a shadow that who shall say to a man what will be after him under the sun’? Interpretation: ‘For and meaningless days they pass through like a shadow? Who can tell them what will happen under the sun after they are gone’? ↓ b. Hayiti muxan latet I.was willing give.INF lehistakel ba=parcuf-o šel ha=maxšir look.INF in.DET=face-POSS.3SG of DET=device Literally: I was willing to give the device anymore. Interpretation: I was willing to give anymore [The power of the telephone, 14.9.1962] ↓ c. Yael mesaperet ki yeš ba-mešk makhela Yael tell.3SG.PRS.F that there.is in.Det=Kibbutz chorus ‘
be-xagim ve-be-moadim in holidays and-on-special.occasions Literally: Yael is saying that there is a chorus in the kibbutz Interpretation: Yael is saying that there is a chorus in the kibbutz that is 3. a zoveax le-elohim yaxaram sacrifices to-God will.be.destroyed Literally: ‘Whoever sacrifices to a god, shall be destroyed, alone’. Interpretation: ‘Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed’.. [Exodus, 22: 19] ↓ b. Iš šaxav ve-lo yakum ad man lie.3ms and-not rise.3ms until ve-lo yeoru mi-šnatam and-not awake.3pl from-sleep.3pl Literally: ‘A man lies down and does not rise until arise and not awaken’ Interpretation: ‘So he lies down and does not rise up till the heavens ↓ c. ve-lo diber ša’ul meuma ba-yom ha-hu ki amar mikre and-not speak.3ms Saul anything on.the-day the-he because say.3M event hu he ‘Saul said nothing that day, for he thought, something must have happened to David to make him ceremonially unclean–surely, he is 4. a. not know.I thing ‘I don’t know anything’ ↓ b. baaraf
know.not ‘I don’t know’ ↓ c. baaraf(
know.not thing ‘I don’t know anything’
Following these definitions, the case of reborrowing or the ‘ping-pong’ effect might be observed as a subtype of both types of cycles. One one hand, it is recruited and mobilized repeatedly, from one language to another, for one persistent discursive goal (in the case of sababa, the persistent function is to express the speaker’s stance) and can therefore be seen as an ‘onomasiological’ cycle. On the other hand, it is still one single item that undergoes change down the path of history and so can be seen as a ‘semasiological’ cycle. Hansen (2018) also discusses the link between the two cycles and claims that the semasiological cycle might be defined as a sub-type of the onomasiological cycle. This paper will discuss this two-faced cyclicity inter-lingually, and not just intra-lingually, over time.
Grammaticalization
Grammaticalization is a term that has received much attention in the past century. Initially coined by Millet (1912), grammaticalization is classically considered to be a process which turns lexemes into grammatical items or content words into function words. However, grammaticalization also makes grammatical items even ‘more grammatical’ (adding new, additional grammatical functions/meanings to the already grammatical item; see Kuryłowicz, 1965), and it basically creates new grammar (or creates a ‘piece of grammar’). This paper focuses on a process by which grammatical change is recurrent, or cyclic, shifting from language A to language B and then back to language A (or at least to one of its dialects), in what we dub as a ‘ping-pong effect’. This change also involves Bridging Contexts (Evans & Wilkins, 2000) and Switch Contexts (Heine, 2002). Evans and Wilkins claim that the reason why a new function (in terms of distribution and interpretation) might be acquired by an item, is generally assumed to be the use of that item in bridging contexts that they define as linguistic environments which are compatible with the new function that an item is acquiring. The evolving item would therefore be predicted to occur in bridging contexts at a significant rate just before the change. Then, the new function is considered to be fully acquired when the item occurs in switch contexts (Heine, 2002), thus only compatible with the new function. Later, the term ‘critical context’ is used by Diewald (2002). For example, Heine (2002, p. 90) discusses the change from a volitive to a proximative for the Swahili item taka, based on the following stages: 5. a a- na- taka ku- ni- ita he-PRES-want INF-me- call ‘he wants to call me’ a- na- taka ku- fa he-PRES-want INF-die i. ‘he wants to die’ ii. ‘he is about to die’ M- ti u- na- taka ku- anguka C3-tree C3-PRES-PROX INF-fall ‘The tree is about to fall’
In this above example, Stage I already serves as a bridging context since the inference is: ‘if he wants to call me, he’ll probably do so soon’. This inference was later foregrounded and turned into meaning (=‘about to’) at stage II which demonstrates both meanings: ‘wants to’ + ‘about to’. Stage III, however, demonstrates the case of a switch context in which only the ‘new’ meaning (‘about to’) applies, as a tree is inanimate and cannot literally want anything. It is generally agreed that if an expression has two meanings A and B, meaning B often came into existence because of a regularly occurring context that supports an inference-driven contextual enrichment of A to B.
This motivation for meaning change is inference-based. Another example is the well-known inference-based development from movement towards a goal to Future: Movement to A < Physical movement (with intention) to A + Inference B: future (intention) < Future. Such movement futures occur cross-linguistically: in English, Spanish, Zulu, and many other African languages (see Heine & Kuteva, 2002), Arabic and Hebrew (e.g., Hebrew omed le-V ‘standing up to-V < near future construction’, Bardenstein, 2023).
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Bybee et al. (1994) discuss ‘motion to futurate’ readings of English verb to go: 6. a. I’ b. You c. The tree
In the examples above, the bridging context in (b) backgrounds the motion reading that remains accessible in a scenario where a person is making a trip to a certain location in order to die there. The switch context in (c) excludes a motion interpretation because trees are not normally believed to move, and only accepts a futurate reading.
Sababa: ‘ping-pong’ contact evolution
The reborrowing or ‘ping-pong’ effect starts with classical Arabic meaning ‘longing and deep love’, then via the strong speaker’s stance conveying an ‘extreme state of affairs’ shifted to 20th-century Hebrew meaning ‘a celebration’, later, in 21st century, changing via bridging contexts into an adverbial/adjective meaning ‘good’ and an agreement discourse marker. Let us examine this evolution step by step:
Arabic ṣabāba/sababa
Based on the Lisān al-ʿArab (لسان العرب, Tongue of Arabs) dictionary,
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the word لقد فنيت روحي عليك صبابة .7 Laqadfanay-tu rwH-y ʕala-yki Have dedicate.PST.1SG-NOM soul-GEN on-ACC فما انت يا روحي العزيزة صانعة
Fa-ma: Ɂanty ya: rwH-y Ɂal-ʕazyz-ah s
ʕ
a:neʕ-ah
So-what you.SG.F oh soul-GEN DEF-dear.3SG-F do.PROG.3SG-F ‘I have dedicated my soul to
The above example is taken from a poem written in Classical Arabic between the years 1517 and 1250 (Mamluk era), a period initially demonstrating the use of Classical Arabic ṣabāba صَباَبة. This use implicates an extreme state of affairs conveying the speaker’s strong stance, an implicated stance that will later function as the motivation for its language contact borrowing into Hebrew. However, in periods following the Mamluk era, there is no evidence of the use of the word other than its contemporary Spoken PA uses, demonstrated below from Bedouin Arabic, a dialect of PA spoken in the Negev- the southern part of Israel. The examples are ordered from the most common ‘o.k’/’no problem’ uses demonstrated in 8–9 to the less-common adjective use demonstrated in 10: 8. Dialogical speech act, a rectificational reply: No problem: بقدرش اكتب القائمة هس Bagdar-esh Ɂakteb Ɂal-qaɁemah hssa: Can.1SG.PRS-NEG write.1SG.PRS DEF-list now A: I can’t write the list right now. B:
In the above example, sababa (written with a final
9. Independent speech act of agreement or approval: OK, right. بدك نلتقي يوم الأربعاء؟
Beddek n-elteqy ywm Ɂal-Ɂarbeʕa:Ɂ
Want.ACC FUT-meet.1PL day DEF-wednsday
A. you like to meet on Wednesday? B.
In the above example, we witness the use of sababa as an independent speech act of agreement. Here, it means ‘o.k’/’no problem’, a use which is similar to the above rectificational use. We found this usage in 27% of the cases.
10. Adjective: ‘good’: كيف كان يومك
Kyf ka:n ywm-ek
How was day.ACC كان يوم صبابا والل Kan ywm Was day good by-god A: How was your day? B: It was a In the above example we witness the use of sababa as an adjective scoping over the noun ‘day’. Here, it means ‘good’. We found this usage in 24% of the cases.
It is interesting then to examine the fact that it was not a diachronic shift between Classical Arabic and Spoken Arabic. Rather, the classical Arabic word was borrowed into IH and then, in a ‘ping-pong’ shift, came back to spoken Palestinian Arabi c. According to Rosenthal (2008), the Arabic word ṣabāba صَباَبة was not used in Palestine/Israel by Arab speakers before the 1970s in Jaffa and was spoken by Arab students (Jaffa is a bi-lingual city). Our evidence of a ṣabāba /sababa ‘ping pong’ effect is based on several corpora: the corpus of the Quran (for historical Classical Arabic), Israeli Historical Jpress Corpus 11 and the Hebrew Historical Maagarim corpus 12 for the Historical Hebrew, later demonstrated by the hetenten corpus for Contemporary Hebrew. 13
Our findings are strengthened by the fact that sababa is not used in any other dialect of Arabic other than the one spoken in Israel/Palestine, not even among neighbouring Jordanian and Egyptian Arabic speakers. Hebrew, like most other human languages, is in constant contact with other languages and is affected by them in various ways. One of the main and easily detectable language-contact phenomena is of word/phrase borrowings (often referred to as ‘loan words’) among bi-lingual communities in Israel. Henkin (2011) claims that during revival Hebrew (mid-19th century-early 20th century), there were voids of emotive or stance items, and so words and phrases were often borrowed from PA into Hebrew, often in a manner that is different than their origin. Sabāba did just that – it provided emotive expression (or: expressing the speaker’s stance, see Du Bois, 2007) that was lacking at the time, in a different manner than its origin, beginning in the 1960s–70s and ongoing to this day.
Hebrew sabaaba/sababa
Sababa is the most common ‘slang’ word of contemporary Hebrew (Rosenthal, 2008). It has various grammatical and linguistic roles (adjective, adverbial, discourse marker, speech act, agreement marker, etc.). Based on the Maagarim corpus as well as the Jpress corpus (providing Hebrew historical data), sabaaba’s first occurrence in Hebrew is attested in the following single example from 1964 (no occurrences were detected prior to that): !יהיה Yihiye
Will.be great ‘It’ll be great fun/celebration, it’ll be
In the above example, the speaker uses sabaaba (written with an סבאבה :א to denote a longer ‘a’ sound) to express emotion/the speaker’s stance. In this above example, the speaker wishes to convince the addressee to come with him or her to the cinema and promises that it is going to be real fun/a celebration. Here, colloquial speech is used by the speaker with other loan words from Arabic as well: fanan ‘artist’, as though saying: ‘artistic’. But the use of sabaaba here means something like ‘extreme fun/celebration’. This usage, as already claimed, was borrowed from Classical Arabic as conveying an ‘extreme state of affairs’, rarely detectable in contemporary Hebrew.
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A similar use of sabaaba in Hebrew is evident in the writings of Menahem Talmi in the 1970s and 1980s (in the following examples). In fact, all of the examples provided in the 1970s in the Jpress corpus are of Menahem Talmi in the Ma’ariv newspaper, meaning that Talmi and Ma’ariv most likely had an important role in the initial use of sabaaba in the Hebrew–Israeli press. Let us examine the following:
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אלה מהבנקים? בטח יודע. ראינו בעיתונים. ראינו בטלויזיה. הקטן של מזרחי, איך שמו להם את החצי מטר בפגיעה ישירה
Ele me-ha-bankim? Betax yodea. Rainu ba-itonim.
Those from-the-banks? Of course know.I. Saw.we on.the-papers Rainu ba-televisia. Saw on.the-television. Sabaaba how pinned them on the -skewer shel Mizraxi,eix samu lahem et haxaci meter be-pgi’a yeshira. of Mizraxi, how put.they to.them ACC the.half meter in-hit direct ‘Those from the banks? Of course, I know. We saw them in the papers, we saw them on TV. אם בא לך לשמוע סיפורים עלא-כיפאק, תזרוק פעם על השולחן את השאלה מי מהיפואים הוריד .13 .את הכיסוח הכי גדול. זרקת את השאלה - Im ba-lex lishmoa sipurim ala-keifak, tizrok pa’am al hashulxan If feel-like.you to.listen stories great throw once on the.table Et hashe’ela mi me-ha-yafo’im horid et ha-kisuax ACC the.question who from-the-Jaffnans took.down ACC the-hard blow Haxi gadol. Zarakta et ha-she’ela
the.most big. Threw.you ACC the-question, sabaaba what stories filled.you ‘If you feel like hearing great stories, throw a question once of who from the people of Jaffa took the biggest ‘job’ (stole). If you did that- sabaaba (great/celebration/wow) what stories you will be filled with”. [Menxem Talmi, Ma’ariv, 1984]
In the above examples, sabaaba is used to refer to an extreme state of affairs, meaning ‘great fun’ or ‘celebration’. It does not bear conceptual meaning but is rather used procedurally as a speech act expressing the speaker’s stance. Then, a few years later (see examples 14), this use had expanded to demonstrate adjectival extremeness. Thus, lexicalization and linguistic change are evident.
איזה חליפה בז’, שגעון אמיתי, טקסטיל Eize xalifa bej, shigaon amiti, textil What.a suit beige craziness real textile ‘What a beige suit, it’s crazy, the textile is
The above example demonstrates the use of sabaaba as an adjective describing the textile. Here the quality of the textile is Hebrew shigao’n (‘madness’) in Hebrew underwent similar change, from a biblical noun (see 15) to an adjectival of extreme quality, similar to ‘terrific’ (see 16). 16 Interestingly, in both cases (sabaaba an shiga’on), we witness a similar path of linguistic change: from an extreme state of affairs to adjectival of extremeness.
[יַכְּכָ֣ה יְהוָ֔ה
Yakex hashem be-
Strike.you LORD in- ‘The LORD will smite thee with Eilatim, hayitem Eilat.residents were.you ‘Residents of Eilat- you were
Thus, the initial use of sabaaba as meaning ‘extreme fun’/’great celebration’ in the late 60s and early 1970s expanded in the 80s and was used to refer to two connected yet different functions as described in the following (Figure 1):
The evolution of sabaaba.
The first development can be seen as a case of metonymy (see Traugott and Dasher (2002) that is considered to be one of the most fundamental mechanisms of change; the second development mentioned above can be explained via the following bridging context originating in 1985: ?א: בא לך לכסח איזה דגים ממולאים ורגל קרושה .17 !ב:
A: Ba lexa le-laseax eize dagim memulaim ve-regel krusha?
Come to.you to-kick some fish.Pl filled.Pl and-leg crocheted A: Do you feel like knocking down some stuffed fish and P’tcha? B:
[Menaxem Talmi, Ma’ariv, 1985]
The above response of speaker B can be interpreted in two ways: a. Great fun/celebration! b. Of course!
Later (1989), sabaaba is evident as a more general agreement-marker, a switch context (without the ‘extremeness’ factor), similar to ‘OK’, in the following example: תביא להם קצת מכל דבר.
Tavi lahem kcat mi-kol davar
Bring to.them a little from-every thing
Sabaaba cixkek yisrael ve-hetxil lehavi kcat mi-kol davar
‘Get them a little of everything!
Menaxem Talmi, Ma’ariv, 1989]
All in all, it is claimed that sabaaba started out its cyclical semantic change from Classical Arabic ṣabāba ‘(deep) longing’, an extreme state of affairs, into IH in the late 60s and early 70s (as sabaaba) via that extremeness, later internally developing into a general agreement discourse marker (see Fraser 1999) that, in turn, transferred back into Spoken PA. This is also evident in the following facts:
a. There is no use of ṣabāba/sabaaba in Arabic in post-Classical Arabic texts. It is first attested in Israel in contemporary (21st century) Spoken PA.
b. As already mentioned, the use of sabaaba/sababa in Contemporary Spoken PA
c. Classical Arabic ṣabāba صباب is not used at all in contemporary Spoken PA to mean ‘extreme state of affairs’ or ‘great fun/celebration’.
In addition, in 21st century, Hebrew sabaaba changed the way it is written and pronounced and was no longer written with an א in it: סבבה sababa, thus pronounced with a shorter a sound. Finally, in 21st-century Hebrew, the earlier sabaaba is rarely used, and its meaning as an ‘extreme state of affairs’ or ‘great fun’ has bleached while the newer sababa has become most common and is extensively used as an adjectival and a discourse marker (meaning ‘O.K’). After examining 100 random examples from the hetenten corpus, we found the following facts:
a. In 59% of the cases, sababa is used as an adjective meaning ‘OK’/’moderately good’, as in the following example:
.ההופעה באודיטוריום עם קהל שהיה אמור להיות קאלט היתה
Ha-hofaa ba-auditoriom im kahal še-haya
The-performance in.the-auditorium with audience that-was.M Amur lihiyot kalt hayta supposed to.be cult was.F ‘The auditorium performance with an audience that was supposed to be a cult, was OK. Nothing more than that’.
In the above example, sababa functions as an adverbial, meaning ‘OK’ or ‘moderately well’. It is not used here as denoting extremeness. This is evident in the following use of ‘nothing more than that’. Also examine the following: .כאילו, הכל בסדר ונראה Keilu, hakol beseder ve-nire Like everything fine and-looks o.k but not more than.that I mean, it is all OK and looks
In the above example, the use of sababa as an adverb(ial) meaning ‘OK’ is also evident, especially due to the fact that what follows it is: ‘not more than that’.
b. In 11% of the cases, sababa is used as a modifying adjective (following nouns) also meaning ‘OK’, ‘moderately good’, as demonstrated in the following examples:
ספר זה, נכתב בראש
Sefer ze nixtav be-rosh
Book this was.written in-head ‘This book was written in ‘a sababa head’ (good mind) ?נשמע לך שילוב Nišma lexa šiluv Sounds to.you combination ’Does that sound like a sababa combination to you or is it too sweet’?
c. In 15% of the cases, sababa is used as a positive dialogical response (even if it’s contrary to expectations), as in the following example:
א: זה פשוט דורש עוד קצת מאמץ .23 ב. a. Ze pašut doreš od kcat maamac It just demands more a little effort b. OK. Bought.I a. ‘It just demands a little more effort’ b. ‘
d. In 2% of the cases, sababa is used for verification, as a rhetorical question. This is demonstrated in the following examples:
?זו פלטפורמה לבטא משהו שמציק לי.
Zo platforma levate mašehu še-mecik li. Sababa?
This.is platform to.express something that-bothers me. ‘This is a platform that is meant to express what bothers me. ?א .נהפוך ונטגן אחרי הפנקייק. ב:
a. Nahafox ve-netagen axrey ha-pancake.
a. We will turn and fry after the pancake. Sababa? (
e. Finally, in 2% of the cases, the Hebrew sababa is used as denoting ‘excellence’. This is rare and is not detected in Arabic, as in the following example:
!במילים אחרות – Be-milim axerot- In-words other.P- ‘In other words,
All in all, the examples given in this paper demonstrate a case of reborrowing and linguistic meaning change in Hebrew and in Spoken PA (focusing on the Bedouin dialect) via a ‘Ping-Pong’ effect: in this case, the cyclical transfer/travel of the use of sababa via language contact. It is a marvellous linguistic process exhibited between two neighbouring languages which have affected each other tremendously.
Summary
In this paper, we have focused on the PA/Contemporary Hebrew word sababa ‘o.k’ and provided a linguistic reborrowing explanation for the mutual cyclical transfer/travel – ‘ping pong effect’, from classical Arabic to 20th-century IH and in contemporary 21st century back to Spoken PA. We have based our investigation on historical/diachronic as well as synchronic data, focusing on cyclicity of change. All in all, we have found a case study which supports the view that while language contact does motivate and affect linguistic change, it does not necessarily occur through internal changes exhibited in the target language itself but rather is transferred back, in cyclical fashion, to the original language. Our results focused on a bilingual community, shedding additional light on the nature of linguistic processes of reborrowing and language contact. This paper will hopefully contribute to a greater understanding of the reborrowing process, especially in a bilingual community such as the one examined in the paper.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
