Folia Orientalia

Abstract

The purposes of this paper are threefold. The first and the most general purpose is to provide an update of Ingham's analysis of the southern lexical features that is based on data gathered more than forty years ago (Ingham 1973). On this basis, I will reconsider the lexical link postulated by Ingham (2009Ingham ( : 101, 2007 between the southern gilit-dialects continuum, on the one hand, and the dialects of the Gulf Coast, on the other hand. The second purpose is to reconsider the hitherto maintained lexical frontiers of the southern continuum suggested by Ingham (1994), discussing a range of items that so far have always been treated as 'southern', though they are widely spread in other gilit-and, to a less extent, in qeltu-dialects in the western and northern parts of Iraq. The third purpose involves proposing the dichotomy Šrūgi/non-Šrūgi as a new and efficient way of classification of the gilit-dialects. At the end of this paper, a list of Šrūgi lexical features is given.