Sedentary and Bedouin Dialects in Contact: Remarks on Karaki and Salṭi (Jordan)

El-Karak and es-Salṭ are two Jordanian towns which have traditionally been in close contact with Bedouin neighbours. Part of their population also claims Bedouin origin. The dialects spoken in the towns can be classified as rural dialects of mixed type. They display a number of Bedouin-type features, e.g. the voiced g variant of *q. The Bedouin traits of Karaki are typical of the dialects spoken in Arabia Petraea, in Salṭi they belong to the dialects of the Syro-Mesopotamian group. Diachronically, some of the features shared with Bedouin dialects may be regarded as conservative sedentary traits, e.g. the retention of interdentals as well as gender distinction in plural of finite verbs and personal pronouns. Both Karaki and Salṭi use the b-imperfect, whereas they differ from each other in the use of negations. Salṭi makes use of the compound negation, in Karaki it is not used