voron wrote:My understanding is that إحكيلي is the imperative form of the verb حكي to talk, with the 1st p.sg. personal pronoun appended. Why does it end with "li" and not "ni"? Or is it the preposition "li" plus the pronoun (which would be spelt separately in MSA)?
Just my two cents here (as a native Palestinian Levantine Arabic speaker): Exactly, "lī" is simply the preposition "li-" plus the attached 1st pers. sing. pronoun "-ī." حكى essentially acts like قال in that it takes the "li-" preposition rather than being followed directly by an attached pronoun (with one exception, see below). And yes, it would be spelled separately in MSA.
But then again, the spelling in Levantine Arabic, as in all dialects, is not standardized. Using the spelling "إحكيلي" or "إحكي لي" is simply a matter of personal preference and neither would be deemed "incorrect."
voron wrote:Is there such a thing as dative in dialects? In MSA, "give me" is أعطني and "tell me" is قل لي, that is, there is no special clitic for a dative pronoun.
As in, a dative "case" being indicated in a noun? From an Arabic grammar point of view, there is no dative case in Arabic (neither in MSA nor in dialects/عامّية), so you're right about that.
voron wrote:I've started Pimsleur Eastern Arabic from which I've learnt how they say "tell me" in Syrian, it's hilarious:
to a man: 'illi
to a woman: 'ili:li,
which apparently comes from قل but it has become hardly recognizable.
True, the end result sounds very different, but I think that if you look at the
transformation from A to B, it will makes sense.
1) (MSA) qul lī, then the qāf phoneme changed to a glottal stop, and you get: 2) (Levantine Arabic) 'ul lī, or 'ulli (which is how Palestinians say it), but the Syrian dialect changed the ḍamma to a kasra so you get: 3) 'illī
But I agree, it sounds quite different. I wonder how and why all the sound shifts happened...
iodalach93 wrote:Lebanese Arabic mixes them a lot. In Syria and else where in the Levant it's always 7aka/7eki + dative (tell me! = احكيلي), but in Lebanon it can be followed by accusative clitics as well (احكيني).
Interesting... Personally, I've only heard the Lebanese mix "lī" and "-nī" whenever the verb meant "to speak" or "to talk" (as opposed to "to tell" or "to say"), as for example, in the phrase, "
حاكيتُه وحاكاني" ("We talked to each other," or literally, "I spoke to him and he spoke to me"). I've never heard the verb with the attached pronoun "-nī" whenever the construction required a direct object (which it would if it were to mean "to tell" or "to say"), as in, e.g. "
إحْكِي لي قصّة" ("Tell me a story.")
Maybe some Lebanese dialects do switch them in the second instance. Well, I guess I learned something new.