Abstract:
The aims of this study are to identify and analyze types of Arabic loans in Pattani Malay, and to analyze the sound system, sound change and semantic change of those loans. The data was collected fro two sources : 1) Pattani Malay-Thai Dictionary, Prince of Songkla University, and 2) the researcher whose mother tongue is Pattai Malay. The data was transcribed by using IPA phonetic symbols. Then, the Arabic loans in Pattani Malay were compared with the Arabic words collected from two Arabic dictionaries: Al Mu'jam Al Wasit and Al Munjid. To test the hypotheses, the data was analyzed carefully. The results show that most of the Arabic loans in Pattani Malay are loanwords, not loan blends nor loan translations, and that most of the loanwords are nouns. The next in number are verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, and words that can be both noun and verb, repectively. A large number of loanwords are about activities, thought and beliefs. This finding rejects the hypothesis that most of the Arabic loans in Pattani Malay are about Islamism. The sound system of Arabic loans consist of less consonant and vowel phonemes than that of Pattani Malay. Final consonants are found to have greater change than initial consonants. This is due to the fact that, in Pattani Malay, only three consonant phonemes can occur in the final position, whereas every consonant phoneme in the sound system of Arabic can occur in the final position. In disyllabic and trisyllabic loanwords, the sound change is greater in final syllables. Regarding the number of syllables in loanwords, it can be increased as well as decreased. The meanings of most Arabic loanwords have become narrower than those of the words in the donor language. Every type of change which can be found in the study is systematic and regular