The Cambridge Chronicle: some linguistic features

The Cambridge Chronicle is the only Sicilian chronicle coheval with the period of the Arab-Islamic domination that has come down to us. The author was probably a Sicilian scribe of Greek or Latin mother tongue working in the Kalbite diwan. The language of the Chronicle, containing many vernacular and Middle Arabic features and some interferences from Greek and Latin, has never been studied up to now. In this article the linguistic analysis of the text, concerning phonetics, orthography, nominal and verbal morphology, syntax and lexicon, will be presented in order to find some vernacular or Middle Arabic elements that might help to shed new light on Sicilian Arabic.