Can two walk together without agreeing to meet? (Amos 3:3): On Canaanite / Arabic Language Contact in the Anthroponyms of Persian Era Idumean

The surprising presence of Arabic anthroponyms in the Aramaic ostraca of Idumea, several centuries before the earliest known Arabic texts, reveals unexpected insights into interesting morphological phenomenon. This paper examines the Arabic anthroponyms found in this corpus to explore the status of case endings in ancient Arabic during the Persian Period. Current research on Arabic largely focuses on the internal historical and genealogical development of its case system. The corpus of anthroponyms of Persian Idumea uniquely reflect an intense language contact situation, a multi-ethnic and multilingual milieu which captures linguistic features from oral dialects otherwise not reflected in the historical epigraphic sources. Applying modern linguistic methodology, including cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language contact studies, we conceptualize the complex dynamics of oral communication in this setting. Specifically, we analyze the interaction between the lingua franca and lingua receptiva axes which likely shaped this linguistic phenomenon.