For the non-Arabist comparative linguist interested in general language typology and linguistic universals, a snapshot in the rapidly changing, non-standard, uncodified, unwritten dialect of the region from southern Iraq (Basra) through Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, U.A.E., and eastern Saudi Arabia (al

Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia is a three-volume study of the Arabic dialects spoken in Bahrain by its older generation, and of the socio-cultural factors which produced them. The material on which the study is based consists of hundreds of hours of transcribed conversations gathered in the mid-1970s. All major social variables are covered in the speaker sample. Volume I, Glossary, lists all the words, with extensive contextual exemplification, which occur in the complete set of texts. Volume II will present these complete texts, and an annotated and translated...