12 55 Years of Arab Studies in Romania - Secţia de Arabă

Dictionnaire arabe français by A. L. de Prémare (from here onwards abridged as
DAF) 5 and A dictionary of Moroccan Arabic: Moroccan English by R. S. Harrell
(abridged as ME). DAF is the most comprehensive dictionary of Moroccan Arabic
dialects and is, on the whole, comprised of entries collected over decades by the
French dialectologist Georges Séraphin Colin. ME contains data gathered in the
sixties of the last century by the American dialectologist Richard Slade Harrell
and is based on the speech of educated Moroccans from the cities of Casablanca,
Rabat and Fez. Occasionally, other less comprehensive dictionaries or glossaries
are as well cited in my article.
Certainly, not all the verbs reflecting ancient forms IV are now equally as
common in Morocco; some of them occur only in a single dialect. For more
details regarding the geographic distribution of a verb, the reader can access the
DAF.
For practical reasons verbs are divided into two different groups. The first
group is comprised of those whose causative/factitive meaning clearly indicate
their origin from a former form IV.
The second group is exclusively comprised of verb doublets reflecting
ancient forms I and IV and, for this reason, show semantic as well as
morphological opposition (respectively a/u ≠ –i and ū ≠ ī in the imperfective of
defective and hollow verbs).
Verbal roots are in this study arranged according to the Arabic alphabet.
Group 1.
gza (yĭgzi)/dza (yĭdzi) “to suffice” 6 < ʔağzā (yuğzī) “to suffice, to replace”.
h}s}a (yăh}s}i) “to count, to enumerate” 7 < ʔ h}s}ā (yuh}s}ī) “to count”.
h}āt} (yh}īt}) “to close in from all sides, to encircle” 8 < ʔah}āt}a (yuh}īt}u) “to enclose, to
encircle”.
xbər} (yəxbər}): “to tell, to inform, to let know” 9 < ʔaxbara (yuxbiru) “” the I stem
xabara means “to try, text, to have experienced”.
5 In spite of its title, it is a dictionary of Moroccan Arabic.
6 DAF 2: 187-189 (wāh}əd lə-qd}ər} lli yĭdzīni “une somme d’argent qui suffise à ma subsistance”).
Verb not quoted by ME.
7 DAF 3: 140; ME 248 (h}s}a băʕda lə-ġnəm “he’s already counted the sheep”); DAM 78.
8 DAF 3: 273-274 (h}āt}ət b-əl-ʕădyān nāqma “une catastrophe a entouré les ennemis de tous
côtés”); not quoted by ME and DAM.
9 ME 213 (xbər}thŭm bīn b}b}āhŭm ža “I informed them that their father has arrived”, xbər}ni fuq-āš
gād yži “let me know when he’s coming”); DAM 159 (xəbr}u b-lli ġədda l-ʕīd “le informaron de
que mañana es la fiesta del cordero”).
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