This volume is a collection of articles written by more than 40 scholars who work in the field of Arabic dialectology. All articles are revised versions of papers presented at the 9th Conference of the Association Internationale de Dialectologie Arabe (AIDA) held in Pescara in March 2011. The variety of dialects represented in the book engage various issues in Arabic dialectology - such as sedentary and Bedouin dialects, sociolinguistic phenomena, and the written dimension - investigated from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The broad range of meaningful subjects that are tackled in the book offer an important contribution to the current debates on general linguistics and sociolinguistics, Arabic linguistics, Arabic literature, as well as Semitic and Islamic studies. (Series: Neue Beihefte zur Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes - Vol. 8)