Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Modern tendencies in the linguistic development of Arabic, in both its literary and colloquial aspects, has for some time now been the subject of serious scholary study (see, e.g. Blau, 1978, Cantarino, 1974-5, Stekevych, 1970, amont others). Contact between different social groups and thus between different dialects and speech levels, has brought about changes in the actual speech of Arabic-speaking peoples which have been variously called koineization, levelling and classicization (or literarization) (cf. Blanc, 1960). These processes will be the subject of this paper.