A Grammar of Zuaran Berber (Libya): Grammar and Texts

This volume contains a survey devoted to the Berber language of the town Zuara on the west coast of Libya. Little was known about this language when T.F. Mitchell (1919-2007) started to study it in the late forties. The data given in this volume concerning language contact and related subject areas are as relevant as when examined by Mitchell and his informant Ramadan Azzabi in the fifties. At that time, Mitchell published two articles on the Zuaran Berber noun. The present book mainly presents his research on the verbal system. This is especially characterised by the use of several affixes, the existence of the aorist as grammatical aspect, and derivations, which are likewise being developed by affixes. In detail, the volume alludes to the diversified typology of conjugation, tense and personal affixes, the derivation and the negation of the verb, the incorporation of object pronouns into the verb, and verbal nouns. The volume is completed by six short conversational texts reflecting the Zuaran everyday life, annotated and translated into English. What makes this book particularly interesting is the fact that Mitchell, a well-known Arabist, paid close attention to contact phenomena between spoken Libyan Arabic and Zuaran Berber. Collecting data for Zuaran Berber, he accumulated evidence for mutual influence of the two interacting languages. In order to make the text more legible the phonetic transcriptions are adjusted to modern standards.- The conversations transcribes and translated in the book can be listened to at the website of the publisher, clicking the book series "Berber Studies" and then the respective volume 26.