Review of A Grammar of Domari

Reviewer: Bruno Hérin

Book Title: A Grammar of Domari

Book Author: Yaron Matras

Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics

Language Documentation

Subject Language(s): Domari

Book Announcement: 24.1141

http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?SubID=7571367

SUMMARY
This book is the first full-length grammatical description of the Domari dialect spoken in Jerusalem.
Domari is an Indo-Aryan language spoken throughout the Middle East by isolated service providing
populations whose self-appellation is Dom. The volume will be of great interest to students of Indo-
Aryan languages and more generally anyone interested in the linguistic diversity of the Middle East.
All the speakers of Jerusalem Domari being bilingual Domari/Arabic, this description offers also an
insightful case study in contact linguistics and as such should interest scholars involved in the study
of contact phenomena. The book consists of 14 chapters covering most levels of linguistic analysis.
The four last chapters include discussions of the Arabic component, a selection of texts and a lexicon.

In Chapter 1, “Introduction”, Matras discusses background information such as ethnographic data

about the Dom and the sociolinguistics of the language. The dramatic state of endangerment of
Jerusalem Domari is striking: it is estimated that only 10 to 20 fluent speakers are still alive. Matras
further discusses previous work on the language, largely restricted to word lists dating back to the
19th century and a grammatical sketch of the very same variety published at the beginning of the
20th century (Macalister 1914). Fragmentary data about other varieties are also dealt with and the
author finally attempts to characterise the differences between southern and northern dialects of
Domari. Also discussed is the relation between Domari and Romani. Romani is the Indo-Aryan
language spoken by the Roma, and Domari has often been referred to as a variety of Romani. This
view clearly appears to be inaccurate and there is “no evidence that Domari and Romani ever
constituted a single language, at any period in their development; but there is on the other hand
plenty of evidence that they underwent shared developments as a result of sharing the same geo-
linguistic environments during successive periods” (27). Fieldwork was carried out in Jerusalem
between 1996 and 2000. The linguistic data on which the description is based consists of elicited
material, narratives and conversations. Although no particular theoretical model is adhered to, two
broad assumptions underlie this work. The first is that pragmatics is considered a “method of
analysis” and not merely a “single component of language” (33). The second assumption pertains to
Matras’ characterisation of what a language is. Domari being in many ways fusional with its contact
language Arabic, Matras defines it “as the repertoire components that speakers activate when they
define their discourse as ‘Domari’” (34-35).

In Chapter 2, “Phonology”, a structural account of Jerusalem Domari phonology is provided. A system

of seven short vowels is posited: /a, e, i, o, u, ɔ, ʌ/. Although minimal pairs are hard to find, length is
distinctive and five long vowels are identified: /ā, ē, ī, ō, ū/. The consonantal system largely reflects
that of the contact language, Arabic. This materialises in the presence of a set of two pharyngeals
(/ħ/ and /ʕ/) and a set of pharyngealised consonants. Interestingly, pharyngealisation also spread to
pre-Arabic items. Nevertheless, Domari maintained distinctions absent from Arabic such as /b/ - /p/
and a three way distinction between /k/, /g/ and uvular /q/. Suprasegmental phonology is dealt with
only in a paragraph on stress. Matras concludes with an insightful paragraph about historical
phonology, situating Domari in the Indo-Aryan group.

In Chapter 3, “Parts of speech and grammatical inflection”, the author departs from a categorisation
purely based on semantic-pragmatic criteria because it blurs the relation between function and
morphosyntactic properties and adopts a characterisation based on inflection. Word classes are thus
identified according to their inflectional properties. Matras isolates eight paradigmatic categories:
gender, number, Layer I case marking, Layer II case marking, person inflection, TMA markers, an
indefiniteness marker and non-verbal predication markers. Combining these paradigmatic categories
with inflectional properties, Matras identifies the following parts of speech: noun, demonstrative,
interrogative, indefinite, personal pronoun, local relation expression, adjective, numeral, gerund,
participle, 3SG past tense verb, finite verb, adverb, and particle. None of these categories are
inflectionally identical (particles remain uninflected). In the remainder of the chapter, Matras reviews
these paradigms considering the following macro-categories: inflection, TMA, gender-number-person
and non-verbal predication.

In Chapter 4, “Nouns and nominal inflection”, Matras starts with nominal derivation and identifies a
limited number of suffixes such as -īš to create verbal nouns from verbal roots, and -wāy to derive
abstract nouns from adjectives.. On the whole, the only truly productive derivational suffix in
Jerusalem Domari is the feminine ending -ī and derivation is a marginal procedure in expanding the
lexicon. Broadening is sporadically attested: qarwi “bitter (F)” > “coffee”, nohra “red” > “tomato” and
“Englishman”. There are two genders: masculine and feminine. Masculine nouns most often end in -a
and feminine nouns in -ī. Nouns can also end in a consonant, in which case gender is not predictable.
Gender governs agreement patterns of demonstratives, adjectives and past-tense verbs in the 3SG.
Matras also makes clear that previous statements that Domari kept the neuter are inaccurate. Plural
is marked on nouns by the ending -e and extends to demonstratives, adjectives, and numerals. Plural
marking is also instantiated in oblique cases through the ending -an. This ending is, according to
Matras, also used to mark other categories such as the free 3SG pronoun pandži pl. pandžan bound
pronouns -o/-i-m-an (1PL), -o/-i-r-an (2PL), -o/-i-s-an (3PL) . Jerusalem Domari also imports the plural
form of items borrowed from Arabic and frequently marks them with the ending -e: dakākīn-e (<
Arabic dukkān “shop” plural dakākīn; Arabic relies mostly on non-concatenative morphology to form
the plural). Gender marking is neutralised with inherited numerals (dī “two” and taran “three”), while
numerals imported from Arabic below ten impose plural agreement (as in Arabic). The language
exhibits an indefiniteness marker -ak, similarly found in other Indo-Aryan languages and in Kurdish, a
former contact language of Jerusalem Domari. Definitness is overtly expressed only in differential
object marking whereby the noun in object position is marked for oblique case if it is definite. The
remainder of the chapter deals with case marking and possessive bound pronouns. Case marking in
Domari is very similar to what is found in other Indo-Aryan languages, most notably Romani. Matras
identifies three layers. Layer I markers developed directly from Old Indo-Aryan and mark a
nominative/oblique opposition. Layer II markers are a set of markers that arose out of the integration
of Middle Indo-Aryan postpositions, while Layer III consists of borrowed Arabic postpositions. Layer I
oblique marking is sensitive to gender, roughly masculine -as and feminine -a. Gender is neutralised
in the plural with a common marker -an. Layer I marks definite objects and mediates between the
noun and Layer II markers. Matras identifies five Layer II cases and six markers (two of them
alternate). Domari marks possession on nouns by bound pronouns that also attach to verbs and a
closed set of “local relations expressions” (164). When bound pronouns are attached, oblique
marking is apparent in the singular, but not in the plural: bar-om “my mother (NOM)”, bar-im- “my
brother (OBL)”, bar-oman “our brother (NOM/OBL)”.

In Chapter 5, “Noun modifiers”, Matras starts with genitive constructions. The main constituent
order in present-day Jerusalem Domari is head-modifier, while older sources refer to modifier-head,
now marginal. This change is explained by convergence towards Arabic in which the order head-
modifier prevails. The rest of the chapter deals with demonstratives, numerals, adjectives and
quantifiers. The lengthiest part treats numerals, since Jerusalem Domari has borrowed all numerals
above five wholesale from Arabic. The outcome is an entire Arabic grammatical sub-system
integrated into Jerusalem Domari, making a synchronic account complex. Matras opportunely
summarises the agreement patterns saying that “The first, consisting of inherited ‘2-3’, neutralises
morphological plurality on the noun. The second, consisting of Arabic-derived ‘4-10’, requires
morphological plurality on the noun. The third, also from Arabic, covers numerals above ‘10’, and
again neutralises plurality marking on the noun.” (200). Matras identifies a class of adjectives that
inflect for gender and number. Here also the older order modifier-head is disappearing in favour of
the Arabic order head-modifier. A striking point is the reliance of speakers of Jerusalem Domari on
Arabic items for comparative forms: tilla “big” but Arabic akbar “bigger”.

Chapter 6, “Pronominal categories” starts with personal pronouns. These can be free or bound.
Intricacies arise when describing case marking on personal free pronouns in Jerusalem Domari, as
these are the outcome divergent historical processes involving free and bound forms, Layer II
markers and a set of “local relations expressions” whose etymology is rather opaque. Pronominal
demonstratives are treated in this section (adnominal use is described in Chapter 5). Two series,
“proximate” and “remote”, that both inflect for gender, number and case are identified. Opposition
of distance is neutralised only in the nominative case for F.SG. and PL. Matras further provides a
rather thorough pragmatically oriented description of the use of demonstratives. Interesting is the
existence in Jerusalem Domari of third person “enclitic subject pronouns” (225) that attach to the
interrogative kate “where” and the presentative haṭe: kate-ta “where is he?” and haṭe-ta “there he
is”. Also noteworthy is the use of what Matras calls “Arabic referential devices” (226). These are
Arabic bound pronouns whose selection is compulsory with the borrowed Arabic particle iyyā- (a
pronominal object carrier) and the Arabic pseudo-verb bidd- “want”. The interrogatives are mostly
inherited, although qadēš (< Arabic qaddēš) “how much” and waqtēš “when” (< rural Palestinian
Arabic waktēš) are commonly found. For indefinites, Jerusalem Domari relies mostly on Arabic
material, except ekak “someone”, kiyak “something” and šinak “a little”. The same goes for the
expression of reflexive and reciprocal constructions.

Chapter 7, “Verb inflection, modals and auxiliaries” is a detailed analysis of verbal morphology. The
Domari verb consists of a lexical root to which derivation, aspect/modality, subject, object, and tense
markers are suffixed in a linear order. Jerusalem Domari derives verbs from non-verbs by
incorporating the markers -ka(r)- and -(h)o-/-(h)r- from the verbs ka(r)- and (h)o-/(h)r- meaning
respectively “do” and “become”. This process is used to integrate Arabic verbs. The use of the former
or the latter is governed roughly by transitivity. Along with Romani, Domari is the only New Indo-
Aryan language that has kept a present tense conjugation based on the suffixation of subject markers
descending from Middle Indo-Aryan, while the past tense conjugation was remodelled from
participial forms. Jerusalem Domari has three markers used in existential constructions: the root ho-
to express a change of state, ašti to express existence and possession, and a set of predication
markers. The rest of the chapter deals with the expression of tense, aspect and modality. Domari has
no infinitive and, like other languages of the region, relies on subjunctive marking in embedded non-
factual predication. In the area of modals and auxiliaries, it is striking to see that Jerusalem Domari
draws almost exclusively on Arabic material with the sole exception of the inherited root saka- “to be
able”.

In Chapter 8, “Local and temporal relations”, the author describes how Jerusalem Domari expresses
spatial, temporal relations, thematic roles because the devices used in the expression of these
semantic categories largely overlap. These are Layer II markers, a set of “inherited spatial
expressions” that exhibit a variety of syntactic behaviours, “person-inflected case markers” and up to
24 Arabic prepositions (294). The expression of the subject and object roles are first covered then
peripheral source and association, and spatial and temporal relations.

In Chapter 9, “Clause structure”, Matras first examines “Nominal clauses” whose canonical form
consists of two nominal components. The first “takes on the subject-topic role” (313) and is usually
sentence initial whereas the second is marked with a predication marker. In a pragmatically oriented
way, information structure is described as a tripartite division of an utterance: pre-verbal field, finite
verb and post-verbal field. Information structure in Jerusalem Domari largely reflects that of the
contact language. Matras further describes interrogative and imperative clauses. Complex clauses
are shown to rely exclusively on Arabic conjunctions and connectors. There is thus wholesale
replication from Arabic for relativisation, complementation, causality, and conditionals. The last part
deals with negative clauses. Jerusalem Domari exhibits split negation in the present tense, with the
prefixation of the inherited marker n- and the accented suffix -eʔ. The marker n- often drops -eʔ is
left alone to mark negation. Such a pattern also appears to be a case of convergence towards the
Palestinian Arabic pattern. Negation in the subjunctive/imperative and the past tense relies also on
n- and is interchangeable with Arabic ma-. Jerusalem Domari also borrowed other Arabic negation
morphemes such mišš, mostly used in non-verbal predication, and the second element of the Arabic
split-negation morpheme -š.
In Chapter 10, “Adverbs and particles”, are defined as a “fuzzy and ill-defined category” that includes
elements whose “common feature is their lack of inflectional morphology and their tendency to have
modifying scope over an entire propositional content” (352). Here also it is striking to see that
Jerusalem Domari relies heavily on Arabic, with the exception of a limited number of inherited items
such as ghay “well”, bol “much”, ihni “so”, and other local and temporal adverbs. An interesting
borrowing is the focus particle gēna “also”, derived from Turkish. Other particles such as
interjections, quotation particle, modal particles, fillers and tags are all replicated from Arabic.
Matras traces the “quotation particle” (359) qal back to the Arabic verb qāl “he said” and its
grammaticalisation path from an inflected verb to an uninflected particle is specific to Domari and
unattested in Palestinian Arabic.

Chapter 11, “The Arabic component”, reviews all the grammatical structures that, though replicated
from Arabic, “constitute a stable and integral part of the structural inventory of Domari” (368).
Matras being also very active in the field of contact linguistics (Matras 2009), it comes as no surprise
that this chapter draws primarily on his research and is well integrated into the grammatical
description. Categories that are prone to replication are treated first. These are lexicon, phonology
and discourse markers. Amongst the borrowed lexical items, one finds also terms that overlap with
the inherited lexicon. These are borrowed in their original phonological shape, making the Arabic
inventory available to speakers. As far as discourse markers are concerned, Matras notes that there
is now ample evidence that this category is amongst the most prone to replication. His main
argument is that bilingual speakers in bilingual communities tend to reduce the burden of keeping to
the two systems apart by generalising “just one set of interaction-regulating structures across the
repertoire” (371). As far as morphological and syntactic borrowing is concerned, Matras reminds us
that derivational morphology is more easily borrowed than inflectional morphology. It thus appears
strange that Domari doesn’t seem to have borrowed any ‘derivational segment’ from Arabic. The first
explanation for this is that speakers of Domari largely integrate Arabic roots into their speech,
rendering the borrowing of inflectional morphology redundant. The second reason is that Arabic
makes only limited use of concatenative morphology and isolating derivational morphemes is
impossible. While the identification of Arabic-derived morphemes is impossible, the integration of
free function words is widely attested (relativiser, complementiser, auxiliaries, and conjunctions).
This also extends to the syntax and semantics of phrases, clauses, sentences, simple and complex.
Matras calls this “convergence in form-function mapping” or “pattern replication” (374), as opposed
to “matter replication” (Matras 2009). Domari is characterised as a language with “heavy borrowing”
(377). Such a notion is, although somewhat impressionistic, justified in the case of Jerusalem Domari
because the extent of borrowing goes beyond structures that are easily transferred in contact
situations. We find thus the total replication of “Arabic local and temporal expressions” (377), Arabic
core prepositions such as maʿ “with”, min “from”, and paradigm inflections of a group of “aspectual
and modal auxiliaries”. From a “system-oriented” point of view (379), there are two different types
of Arabic-derived material. The first is elements for which Domari has no internal alternative. The
second type is categories for which Domari possesses inherited options. The question of when one is
dealing with borrowing versus code-switching in the context of Jerusalem Arabic is quite complex
and Matras suggests that it should be seen as a continuum. Typically, borrowings will be the first
type, morphologically integrated into Domari, while code-switching is defined as “optional insertions
of words as well as entire phrases and utterances, often intentionally for special conversational and
stylistic effects” (381-382). In conclusion, although it may be tempting to consider Jerusalem Domari
a mixed language, such a characterisation is improper because the Arabic and Indic components are
not complementary and their use is stylistically contrastive. This massive intertwining of both
components leads Matras to conclude that “languageness” in multilingual contexts should not be
considered in terms of separate systems but rather focus on “speakers’ modes of negotiating their
entire personal and collective repertoires of linguistic and communicative structures” (390).

Chapter 12, “Samples of talk”, contains five texts with translations and morphological glossing.
Happily, the corresponding audio files are accessible on the publisher’s website.

Chapter 13, “Notes on the Domari lexicon”, discusses the nature of the lexicon in the recordings.
Strikingly, only one third of the items are of pre-Arabic origin, comprising inherited (Indo-Aryan),
Iranian and Turkic items. This is balanced however by the fact that basic vocabulary “shows much
higher dependency on inherited lexemes” (428).

Chapter 14, “Domari vocabulary”, provides a glossary of the material retrieved from the corpus.
Matras provides a translation, part of speech and language of origin (Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish and
Persian).

EVALUATION
This work offers a thorough description of the variety of Domari spoken in Jerusalem. The time-depth
between the fieldwork (late 1990s) and this publication clearly indicates that the author provides us
a mature analysis, patiently refined over a decade. Jerusalem Domari is a highly endangered Indic
language in intense contact, whose last speakers are all bilingual in Palestinian Arabic and it exhibits
layers of mainly Kurdish elements and more marginally Persian and Turkish. The author clearly
demonstrates an in-depth expertise in the fields required to deal with this configuration: contact
linguistics, intimate knowledge of Palestinian Arabic and previous contact languages of Jerusalem
Domari, and knowledge of languages with parallel profiles such as Romani.

The coverage of grammatical structures is relatively comprehensive and the general function-to-form
organisation will help typologists quickly find their way around. The only area that receives limited
attention is suprasegmental phonology and a more detailed analysis of stress assignment and
intonational patterns would have been welcome. For instance, Matras states that it is not possible to
recognise borrowings on phonological grounds because the phonology of Arabic was integrated
wholesale into Domari (381). However, the language seems to have kept a separate lexical stress
pattern. Accordingly, items integrated into Domari should be stressed differently than in Arabic (as
acknowledged on page 62). A discussion of stress assignment in verbs borrowed from Arabic could
also provide further evidence about the degree of structural integration between the two
components of complex verbs.

As far as the current contact language is concerned, the author clearly demonstrates a deep
knowledge of Palestinian Arabic, which allows him to provide us with a thorough analysis of the
interactions between Domari and Arabic. The extent of intertwining between the two languages is so
great that one may be tempted to say that writing about the grammar of Jerusalem Domari is also
about writing about the grammar of Jerusalem Arabic. Arabic dialectology is a very active field and
many reliable descriptions covering most of the varieties of Arabic are available. References to these
works may have given in some cases further explanations about the semantics of Arabic-derived
material. This can be exemplified with the particle atāri (360-361), commonly found in the eastern
dialects of Arabic, about which Matras says that “its original lexical meaning is one of approximation -
- ‘just like’ --”. The meaning of this particle is indeed opaque but recent studies shed new light on it
and describe it as an “evidential presentative” (Henkin 2010:141-142). Apart from these two minor
remarks on phonology and references to works in Arabic dialectology, the book is written in a clear
and rich style which makes it easy to read. It will benefit everyone interested in language contact,
Indo-Aryan languages, including students of Romani, and other ‘Gypsy’ languages. Also valuable to
the field of grammaticography is the author’s efforts to put pragmatics at the centre of linguistic
description.

REFERENCES
Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Henkin, Roni 2010. Negev Arabic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Herin, Bruno. 2012. The Domari Language of Aleppo (Syria). Linguistic Discovery 10.2. 1-52.