Again on Peter Caxaro’s Cantilena : some remarks from the viewpoint of wider western Arabic dialectology

Abstract

Some months ago Bernard Micallef addressed the first of us with a request to “consider contributing a study on the value of the Cantilena for Maghribi dialectology”, coupled with a kind offer to supply copies of all the contributions on that interesting text, its author and its discovery, and to clarify any difficulties that may arise in the course of writing such a paper. Having been myself for the last decades mostly confined to research on Andalusi Arabic and its literature, I deemed it wiser to share that task with my colleague Dr Vicente, who happens to share the responsibilities of teaching and researching in Arabic at my own university, and is a fulltime specialist in Maghribian dialectology, so that I suggested to our Maltese colleagues the idea of doing this job as a joint venture with her, which they immediately accepted.