A STUDY OF THE BELRUT DIALECT OF JUDEO-SPANLSH AS SPOKEN BY ONE INFORMANT by Dorothy-Ann Taylor B.A., University of British Columbia, 1965. A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the department of ROMANCE STUDIES We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNLVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April, 1969In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, | agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and Study. | further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Oepartment of Hispanic and Italian Studies The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada at : Loa kool /4I69This thesis is a study of the Beirut dialect of Judeo-spanish as spoken by one informant of that community now living in Vancouver, he analysis of the dialect was based uyon oral material wh: was tape-recorded. The study deseribes the phonology, lexicon, morph- ology, and syntax as they appeared in the corpus which consisted of about 33,000 words. Pertinent features are compared to both the Judeo-Spanish norm ané to Old Spanish, noting the conformations, and differences, and indicating the reason for variances. the informant's speech contained many archaisms especially in the vocebulary. Archaic features of the phonology, however, have become obscured through the influence of superstreta and cannot provide eny conclusive evidence which would corroborate certain phonetic divtinetions of Old Spanish. There is also some veriance between the phonology of this dialect and other Sephardic dialects. Also evident in the dialect studied here were: impoverishnent of vocabulery, the introduction of neologisms and new formations, analogical changes conmon to Sephardic Spanish and some other analogical changes peculiar to this dialect only. While other dialect etudies of Judeo-Spanish show a dominant number of Turkish loans, this dialect has a far greater nunber of Gelliciene of apparently recent introduction. Widespread cocial and cultural changes in the life of the Sepherdim in recent yeets heave radically affected these dialects. The increasing pressure of ex- ternal influences is obscuring many phonological ané syntactical patterns hitherto used by Judeo-Spanich and the existence of many anomalies and much free variation is evidence of the advanced state of decay of this dialect.