Abstract
The speech of the camel-breeders of the Arabian Peninsula is said to be very archaic and conservative in relation to other Arabic dialects. However, this state of affairs has not yet been confirmed for modern dialects due to the lack of study on this subject (Younes 2018: 265) which could corroborate such assumptions. In this framework the present work aims at providing new insights into the recent developments of the Bedouin Arabic dialect of the Bani Ṣaxar tribe in Jordan. Hitherto, only short grammatical sketches of their speech have been available (Cantineau 1937, Palva 1980). Thus, to provide new material I carried out two fieldwork campaigns between 2021 and 2022. Some phonological and morphological specificities of their speech are here stressed and compared to those of two other Jordanian tribes (Bani ʕAbbād and Ḥwēṭāt, that are respectively sheep and camel-rearing), and some tribes located in Negev (Ẓullām and ʕAzāzmih) and Saudi Arabia (Šammar and Ḥarb), for a better understanding of the development of the Ṣxari dialect, in relation to its geographical position and/or historical ties with the neighboring tribes.