Research Projects
1. Modernity, Migration and Minorities: Three Case Studies of Arabic in Contact
Over the past fifty years, the Arab-speaking world has experienced an enormous rural-urban and urban-urban migration which have brought dialects into contact which historically had little or no contact. This project used variationist sociolinguistic methodology to investigate three case studies exemplifying different situations and outcomes of migration. ...more
2. Idiomaticity
This study brings together elements of general linguistics, corpus linguistic and Arabic linguistics in order to investigate central issues of language change. The ultimate goal of the project is to determine the extent to which idiomatic structures are maintained across varieties separated diachronically and geographically. ...more
3. Glavda in Rural and Urban contexts
The project aims to document the language by providing a corpus of around 100,000 words, all texts transcribed and translated and provided partially with interlinear glosses. Additionally, special attention will be given to providing texts from Maiduguri, the largest city in the area of Ngoshe, which has a large population of Glavda origin, particularly in the area of Lain Ngoshe, behind the University of Maiduguri teaching hospital on Bama Road. ...more
4. In their own voices, in the own words: a collection of stories
Over the past 30 years various research projects have been conducted under the auspices of Bayreuth Arabistik, nearly all of them based in part or wholly on sociolinguistically-determined texts collections. All of the texts have been transcribed and are here made available in audio and transcriptoinal format. Many of the texts are translated wholly or partly into English. Because they are sociolinguistically informed, individuals from across the relevant population spectrums are to be found in them. ...more