Middle Arabic and Mixed Arabic Conference
Fecha: del 11 al 14 de Octubre de 2010.
Lugar de realización: Florencia (Italia).
Organiza: International Association for the Study of Middle and Mixed Arabic (AIMA).
Más información sobre el congreso y la asociación en http://www.linguistica.unifi.it/
Objectives of AIMA, issues that should be given priority, aims and goals of the third Symposium
The structural differences between spoken and written varieties in the Arabic language, which has been a permanent reality throughout its history, resulted in the creation and development of intermediate and mixed varieties which were written and probably spoken as well. These are commonly called "Middle Arabic" varieties. After the publication of some pioneering research work in that field, Middle Arabic has been established as a new scientific branch of its own right by Prof. J. Blau's works. Although research on Middle Arabic is of vital importance to the reconstruction of the history of the Arabic language, its value has not been sufficiently recognized, as the dispersion of the work in the field and the absence of an overview on the research reveal.
This third Symposium on that topic aims again at reviewing the current state of knowledge of Middle Arabic, taking into account its historical and geographical context, and at thinking over the different methods of analysis, as well as the problems of definition and terminology which are still under discussion in this field of research. In this respect, it is more than ever wanted to try to improve our state of knowledge through a comparison with the results of researches conducted simultaneously during the last forty years in a field closely connected with it: we refer here to the modern study of so called "middle" or "mixed" varieties of Arabic. Data, methods of analysis and problems which arise in that type of research are all comparable whith those which have already arisen in Middle Arabic, and are sometimes the very same.
We are also still eager to extend the comparison to neighbouring sociolinguistical situations, either in Semitic (Hebrew for instance) or in other areas (Chinese, Greek, English, German, Italian, French ...).
The organizers also wish that specialists of different fields of Arabic studies (history, philosophy, history of sciences or literature etc.) should take part in the Symposium. Not beeing always linguists, they are nevertheless faced, in the texts they study, with mixed or intermediate varieties of Arabic of which they are the best experts.
Let us recall that during the previous Symposia, participants largely agreed that Middle Arabic, in spite of its different expressions, constitutes an autonomous variety which can and must be systematically described, that it has rules which can be drawn, and that it follows norms on which standards are established.
Let us finally give again a short list of issues which our association considers as deserving particular attention :