al-Athar al-ʻArabī fī al-Lughah al-Sawāḥilīyah: al-Iqtirāḍ al-Lughawī bayna al-Muʻjam wa-al-Tarkīb fī Ḍawʼ al-Tafāʻul al-Ḥaḍārī - Abū al-Ḥasan, Ṣalāḥ Muḥammad; Muʼtamar al-Istiqāmah al-Duwalī al-Thānī: al-ʻUmānīyūn wa-al-Sawāḥilīyah bayna al-Taʼthīr wa-al-Taʼaththur (2026) (Mumbāsā) (Mumbāsā : Jamʻīyat al-Istiqāmah al-Khayrīyah al-Islāmīyah al-ʻĀlamīyah, 2026)
This study turns on the question of how far the extended linguistic and civilizational contact between Arabic and Swahili has shaped the lexical and syntactic structure of the Swahili language, and on the nature of the linguistic borrowing that resulted from this interaction: was it confined to direct lexical borrowing, or did it pass beyond that to deeper syntactic and semantic patterns reflecting a structural transfer within the Swahili linguistic system? The study aims to record the manifestations of Arabic influence on Swahili and to reveal the volume of lexical borrowing from Arabic in the Swahili lexicon, particularly in the semantic fields associated with religion, administration, commerce and social life, in addition to analysing the aspects of influence at other levels of the language.
Permanent citation identifier: MHF-MOMBASA2026-013.
Conference theme (in Arabic): المحور الثالث: الأثر العربي في السواحلية.
Text in Arabic; title also romanized (ALA-LC); abstract and keywords in English.
Keywords: Language contact; Lexical borrowing; Syntax; Arabic and Swahili; Semantic fields; Linguistics