...
No, I think laam is always meant as -L-, be it to be actually
pronounced, or "virtually".
All I do suggest is:
* say we have a type of spelling (i.e. Arabic spelling) where the
pausal form is the way a word is represented, not the context form
(i.e. each word is spelled as if it stands alone). For this we have
thousands of examples all over each Arabic text: - taa marbuuta (in
context, usually pronounced (in classical Arabic grammar) as -t-, but
never written as taa'; - alif al-wasl for stems vii, viii, x (surely
no historical hamz!), and some more.
* this means, we have no attempt at phonetic speling, rather a certain
artificial approach to spelling;
* then we see that there is an "article" that was originally only
C1-gemination;
* however, because of dissimilation in certain consonants, in quite a
few cases the "article" looks like -l-
* the, in a way very practical, thought comes up (speakers/users of
Arabic not always being interested in comparative linguistics nor in
phonetic spelling, just as it goes with any language): "that laam must
be something real; we may not pronounce it all the time, but let's
write it whenever we think it "is there/could have been there", i.e.
in the definition marker of nouns."
* then we don't really have the Laam as a sign of gemination, we just
have a certain interpretation of the dissimilated laam as the "real"
article.
... (quoting Tropper)This is clearly because Qur'anic Arabic was not a Northern Arabic dialect, i.e. one from around Damascus and Petra which is where I think the oldest material comes from (and which would have been strongly influenced by Hebrew, Moabite, Ammonite and Edomite which I think all had h- for the article, in texts in which gemination is not marked), but one from much further south, where the article had developed a slightly different form. But yes, the situation is complex.
"In the Arabic branch [of Semit. lang. HM], the situation of the
definite articles that we find is complex... The article (')al- [sic,
I wonder why not ('a)l- ? HM] of classical Arabic seems to differ
completely from the epigraphic material of early Northern Arabic
dialects; the latter, like Canaanitic, have as the normal form h-."
...
This process is of course possible, although unlikely simply because as
you say "Arabic is a stenographic type of script" which avoids writing
anything unnecessarily. But my point is that written records prove that
this writing convention must go back to the time of Mohammed, or at the
very latest shortly afterwards.
Or ages prior to that; ...
But my issue here is not the comparison between modern Egyptian Arabic
and other modern dialects, it is between modern Egyptian Arabic and the
dialect of the Qur'an, as indicated by the spelling of the article in
the oldest Qur'an MSS.
I have to take a good look at that. The only Qur'an I have at home is
the traditional text. However, I think the oldest MSS are unvocalised,
so of little use to us: they'll all show the alif, the laam, ...
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