Introduction
In Nehbandan County, located in the south of South Khorasan Province, various dialects belonging to Persian, Arabic, and Balochi are spoken. In this county, Arabic is used alongside Persian in the Arabkhaneh region. The Arabic dialects of the Arabkhaneh region are among those dialects that have received little or no scholarly attention. Tutesk is a small village belonging to the Arabkhaneh Rural District, located in Nehbandan County, South Khorasan Province. The reason for selecting this village as the subject of the present study is its relatively large population compared with other villages in the region. The derivational system is considered the most significant word-formation process in Arabic and one of the essential mechanisms contributing to the development and enrichment of the language. The vitality of Arabic depends on the health and productivity of its derivational system. For this reason, Muslim linguists have attached great importance to derivation since the early stages of Arabic linguistic studies. Therefore, examining the derivational system of the dialect spoken in the aforementioned villages can reveal the extent of interaction between Arabic and Persian. Only limited research has been conducted on the Arabic dialects of Arabkhaneh. These studies can be divided into three groups. The first group includes works that introduce and provide general descriptions of the Arabkhaneh region. The second group consists of studies focusing on the morphological and lexical features of the dialects. The third group examines the influence of Persian on these dialects. However, none of these studies has investigated the derivational system of the Arabic dialect spoken in one of the villages of the Arabkhaneh region. Accordingly, the present study aims to describe the processes of word formation in the Arabic dialect of Tutesk village and, as far as possible, to investigate verbal and nominal derivatives from several roots along with relevant examples. It seeks to answer the following questions:
· How are words formed in the Tutesk Arabic dialect?
· To what extent do the rules of derivation and word formation in the Tutesk Arabic dialect differ from those of Standard Arabic?
It is hypothesized that, due to prolonged contact with Persian speakers, the processes of derivation and word formation in this dialect have undergone fundamental differences compared with Standard Arabic.
Method
The data and information related to the Tutesk Arabic dialect were collected through library research, fieldwork, conversations with native speakers, and direct interviews. In selecting the informants, factors such as educational background, age, and occupation were taken into consideration. This study examines the derivational and inflectional morphological systems of the Tutesk Arabic dialect in word formation through a descriptive-analytical approach. The theoretical framework of the research is based on traditional Arabic morphology, and the data analysis is conducted by comparing the morphological forms of the studied dialect with their corresponding structures in Modern Standard Arabic. Within this framework, verbal, nominal, and derived structures are analyzed in terms of root patterns, morphological templates (wazn), derivation, and inflection in order to systematically describe and explain the morphological characteristics of the dialect, as well as its similarities and differences with Standard Arabic. The words and sentences collected from Tutesk village and presented in this article were transcribed phonologically for more accurate linguistic analysis and are enclosed in brackets. The transcription system used for recording this Arabic dialect was adapted from An Introduction to Arabic Phonetics and Qur’anic Tajwīd (Zandi, 1389, pp. 43–45). It should be noted that, in addition to this source, the book The Phonetic Structure of the Arabic Language was also consulted as a valuable reference in the field of Arabic phonetics. A comparison of the two sources indicates that the transcription symbols for most consonants are identical in both systems, with minor differences observed only in the representation of three consonants: jīm (ج), shīn (ش), and ʿayn (ع).
Results
Unlike Standard Arabic, this dialect extensively incorporates elements from the Persian language, particularly in newly emerging words and expressions. This phenomenon indicates the influence of the standard language on the local dialect. Although the Arabic dialect of Tutesk village preserves numerous morphological patterns and templates, it is no longer fully effective in dealing with new and diverse concepts or in creating new lexical items. Instead, it increasingly tends to borrow words from Persian; consequently, the influence of Persian on this dialect continues to expand. The primary vulnerability of the Arabic dialect of Tutesk village, alongside external factors such as the influence of neighboring Persian dialects, lies in its derivational system. The productivity and functional capacity of this system have become significantly restricted, creating serious conditions for its decline and eventual disappearance. Unlike Arabic, this dialect has largely lost its ability to derive new forms and generate vocabulary, and it is now strongly influenced by Persian linguistic and conceptual patterns. The reduction of verbal forms from fourteen to ten, the declining productivity of augmented verb patterns (afʿāl al-mazīd), the replacement of derivation by compounding processes, and the influence of Persian on structures such as the elative (ism al-tafḍīl), intensive forms (ṣīghat al-mubālagha), and instrument nouns (ism al-āla) all demonstrate that the morphological system of this dialect has lost much of its former productivity and efficiency. Therefore, it appears that the linguistic and cultural conditions for the decline and transformation of this dialect have been established. The disappearance of the Arabic dialect, as the primary vessel of its cultural heritage, would in fact represent the loss of a part of the history of a subculture that first developed in Arab regions and later took root in South Khorasan. Preserving this dialect, as a significant example of intangible cultural heritage, would contribute to greater linguistic diversity and cultural richness.
Discussion and Conclusion
Following the analysis of this dialect and the similarities and differences between it and Standard Arabic, the following findings were obtained. In the Tutesk Arabic dialect, the use of basic verbal nouns is very limited, and nouns denoting concrete entities and abstract concepts play a more prominent role. Furthermore, augmented triliteral verbal nouns in this dialect are used in a compound form, similar to Persian. Unlike Standard Arabic, which primarily forms new words through derivation, the Tutesk Arabic dialect also employs compounding as a word-formation process. For example, the expression “the milk became cheese” is rendered in Standard Arabic as, “تَجَبَّنَ اللَّبَنُ”, where a verb is derived from a concrete noun. However, in the Tutesk dialect, “الحِلیبْ جِبَنْ إِسْتَ” is a compound construction rather than a derived form. The past and present verb conjugations in this dialect differ phonologically from those of Standard Arabic, although they maintain gender agreement. Moreover, in the inflectional system of most past-tense verbs, the second-person masculine singular and first-person singular forms are identical and must be distinguished through contextual clues. The number of verbal forms has been reduced from the fourteen traditional Arabic conjugational forms to ten forms in this dialect. Unlike Standard Arabic, the dialect does not have distinct grammatical forms for the passive past and passive present. Instead, verbs are made passive by using specific verb patterns, such as infiʿāl and tafaʿʿul. The formation of imperative verbs in the Tutesk dialect differs from Standard Arabic. To form third-person and first-person imperatives, the particle “رِد” (meaning “must/should”) is added to the four third-person imperative forms and the two first-person imperative forms. In addition, the final “نون” (“نون” marking the indicative mood) is not dropped from the end of the verb. Since augmented verb forms are rarely used in this dialect, agent nouns derived from triliteral augmented verbs, as seen in Standard Arabic, do not occur; however, agent nouns derived from simple triliteral verbs are present. In the Tutesk dialect, patient nouns (passive participles) are mostly derived from infiʿāl. The structure of comparative and superlative adjectives has been influenced by the Persian language and differs from Standard Arabic. The suffixes -tar and -tarin (Persian comparative and superlative markers) are appended to the elative noun. Furthermore, unlike in Standard Arabic, elative nouns in this dialect are also formed from color terms. While intensive code/pattern forms (nouns of intensity) are abundant in Standard Arabic, they are rarely used in the Tutesk dialect. In this dialect, intensive noun patterns cannot convey their full meaning on their own without a Persian adverb. In other words, the intensive noun in this dialect is essentially the same as the agent noun, with the difference that the word “خَیلِ” (very) is typically added before the agent noun. Some nouns of instrument in this dialect follow Classical Arabic patterns, while others are used in Persian forms (with minor modifications). Although these nouns of instrument follow Classical Arabic patterns, they differ phonetically from them.