Tunisia’s Linguistic terra incognita

Applicant: Veronika Ritt-Benmimoun University of Vienna National research partner: Karlheinz Mörth Austrian Academy of Sciences This project will provide up-to-date linguistic data for the hitherto almost unknown Arabic varieties spoken in the region approximating the seven Tunisian governorates of Jendouba, Beja, Kef, Siliana, Kasserine, Sidi Bouzid, and Gafsa. This region can be viewed as a unit because of its shared socio- linguistic (Bedouin-type dialects), socio-historical (semi-nomadism and sedentarization), socio- economic (weak economy, high unemployment, emigration), and topographical (mainly mountainous) character. In 1950 the famous French dialectologist William Marçais affixed the term terra incognita to Tunisian Bedouin-type dialects, differentiating them into what he called the H- (Hilal) and S- (Sulaym) dialects. His judgement that further research into these almost completely unknown varieties is urgently needed still holds true now, almost 70 years later. Therefore, this project is the first attempt to linguistically illuminate a part of Tunisia which has long remained under-studied, in contrast to some dialects spoken along the coast. The first phase of the project will involve the recording and collecting of the linguistic data through fieldwork using mainly qualitative methods considering the relevant diatopic and diastratic parameters. In the second phase selected dialects will be sketched and two varieties representing the main dialectal areas described in detail. Intra-dialectal comparison will reveal the common traits and differences of Tunisian Bedouin-type dialects and should enable a detailed classification of them, something which has hitherto never been undertaken. The shared history of (semi)nomadism and the current social reality of settlement will allow us to consider how Bedouin these dialects are and whether some of them have gone through a process of urbanization. Ultimately a digital and fully searchable corpus of transcribed and translated narrative and ethnographic texts and conversations will be built. This corpus and the gathered data will be hosted at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (Austrian Academy of Sciences). This will ensure both open access and long-term preservation of our data. Our project promises to be a giant stride in our knowledge of Tunisias linguistic landscape, and will be of signal importance for an understanding of the complex relationship between the Tunisian dialects and those spoken in adjacent areas of Algeria and Libya. It will also provide new insights into the diachronic and synchronic linguistic situation in the central Maghreb.

In the project Tunisia's linguistic Terra incognita (TUNOCENT), whose national research partner was the ACDH-CH of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, linguistic data for the hitherto almost unknown Arabic varieties spoken in north-west and central Tunisia were collected in numerous field research visits. These regions include the seven Tunisian governorates of Jendouba, Beja, Kef, Siliana, Kasserine, Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa. At the end of the project, we now have around 740 hours of voice recordings from 113 Tunisian locations from more than 900 speakers. Short sample texts and questionnaires with important linguistic features (feature lists) recorded in all these places have been digitalised and can be searched online, even across dialects. This enables the generation of comparative lists of linguistic features at all points of investigation (https://tunocent.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/). This website also presents extra-linguistic aspects, i.e. images and descriptions of the reference points at which linguistic data was recorded (profiles). The language recordings, which in addition to the structured questionnaires also contain dialogues, ethnographic texts, reports from the lives of the speakers and orally transmitted narratives, are not only important for Arabic dialectology and linguistics, but also for anthropology and ethnography and thus of utmost importance for the Tunisians themselves, as they preserve both the local dialects and the mostly only orally transmitted cultural heritage in the long term. Part of this transcribed language corpus is already available on the website. The linguistic analysis of the transcribed texts and questionnaires revealed an incredible wealth of dialectological features: many of them previously unknown to exist in Tunisian dialects. Detailed dialect descriptions of two hitherto uninvestigated northern dialects were produced as a MA thesis and a dissertation. Shorter dialect sketches were published for the towns of El Kef, Sidi Bouzid and south-eastern Kasserine. The data also represent an incredible treasure from a sociolinguistic point of view, as they document linguistic variation on the one hand and language attitudes on the other, making it easy to track who changes their dialect and for what reason. Comparative studies (e.g. on interrogatives, abandonment or retention of genus distinction, nominal negation, diminutives, verb conjugation, future particles) show which linguistic characteristics are relevant for categorisation into dialect groups. On the one hand, it can be seen that the northern dialects of the governorates of Beja and Jendouba show clear similarities to the Gafsa dialects; on the other hand, that the dialects in central Tunisia differ significantly from those in northern and southern Tunisia. The following provisional categorisation is proposed: north-western dialects (Jendouba, Beja); central-western dialects 1: Kef, Siliana, northern Kasserine, northern Sidi Bouzid; central-western dialects 2: central and southern Kasserine, central Sidi Bouzid and northern Gafsa; southeastern dialects: southern Sidi Bouzid, eastern Gafsa.