David Wilmsen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- December 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198718123
- eISBN:
- 9780191787485
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718123.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology
That some dialects of Arabic negate with a pre-posed mā alone, some with what is called ‘bipartite’ negation mā … š, and some with post-positive -š alone has invited comparisons with a similar ...
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That some dialects of Arabic negate with a pre-posed mā alone, some with what is called ‘bipartite’ negation mā … š, and some with post-positive -š alone has invited comparisons with a similar process, called Jespersen’s Cycle, said to have occurred in French, whereby the pre-posed negator ne became associated with an emphatic post-positive particle pas ‘step’—and, in some French vernaculars, with a post-positive pas alone. Yet the similarity between Arabic and French is purely superficial, lacking supporting linguistic evidence. Forcing the facts of Arabic into preconceived theoretical constructs, both formal and functional, engenders erroneous conclusions. The source of the Arabic negator -š is polar interrogation, for which evidence does indeed exist in various Arabic dialects, including Andalusi, Egyptian, Levantine, Maltese, Tunisian, and Yemeni. The polar interrogative šī, itself derived from an existential particle, ultimately arose from the Proto-Semitic presentative ša and 3rd person pronouns šū, šī, and šunu. Supporting evidence for this comes from the West Semitic Modern South Arabian languages, which possess an existential particle, an indefinite determiner, and inchoate interrogative śi analogous in form and function to that of the Arabic šī. With this, it becomes possible to propose the operation of a different cycle in Arabic: the negative-existential (or Croft’s) cycle. Such comparative evidence from Arabic dialects and sister languages, along with historical records of an Arab presence in the Fertile Crescent centuries before the arrival of Arabic speaking Muslims in the 7th century AD, provides convincing evidence for the antiquity of the Arabic dialects.Less
That some dialects of Arabic negate with a pre-posed mā alone, some with what is called ‘bipartite’ negation mā … š, and some with post-positive -š alone has invited comparisons with a similar process, called Jespersen’s Cycle, said to have occurred in French, whereby the pre-posed negator ne became associated with an emphatic post-positive particle pas ‘step’—and, in some French vernaculars, with a post-positive pas alone. Yet the similarity between Arabic and French is purely superficial, lacking supporting linguistic evidence. Forcing the facts of Arabic into preconceived theoretical constructs, both formal and functional, engenders erroneous conclusions. The source of the Arabic negator -š is polar interrogation, for which evidence does indeed exist in various Arabic dialects, including Andalusi, Egyptian, Levantine, Maltese, Tunisian, and Yemeni. The polar interrogative šī, itself derived from an existential particle, ultimately arose from the Proto-Semitic presentative ša and 3rd person pronouns šū, šī, and šunu. Supporting evidence for this comes from the West Semitic Modern South Arabian languages, which possess an existential particle, an indefinite determiner, and inchoate interrogative śi analogous in form and function to that of the Arabic šī. With this, it becomes possible to propose the operation of a different cycle in Arabic: the negative-existential (or Croft’s) cycle. Such comparative evidence from Arabic dialects and sister languages, along with historical records of an Arab presence in the Fertile Crescent centuries before the arrival of Arabic speaking Muslims in the 7th century AD, provides convincing evidence for the antiquity of the Arabic dialects.
David Wilmsen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- December 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198718123
- eISBN:
- 9780191787485
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718123.003.0007
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology
Grammatical šī in Arabic shares more surface similarities and functional affinities with Proto-Semitic 3rd person pronouns and other Semitic function words than it does with the Arabic word for ...
More
Grammatical šī in Arabic shares more surface similarities and functional affinities with Proto-Semitic 3rd person pronouns and other Semitic function words than it does with the Arabic word for ‘thing’, itself probably deriving later from an indefinite determiner šī. Of the few genuine cases of degrammaticalization, the best-supported is the movement from indefinite determiners to content words. The other functionalities of the existential particle šī arose from a Proto-Semitic demonstrative or presentative, not along a unidirectional cline but through a potentially overlapping series of lateral shifts, changes, neither more nor less grammatical, representing movement on the cline but not up or down it. The development of negative -š in Arabic conforms to Croft’s negative-indefinite cycle, not Jespersen’s.Less
Grammatical šī in Arabic shares more surface similarities and functional affinities with Proto-Semitic 3rd person pronouns and other Semitic function words than it does with the Arabic word for ‘thing’, itself probably deriving later from an indefinite determiner šī. Of the few genuine cases of degrammaticalization, the best-supported is the movement from indefinite determiners to content words. The other functionalities of the existential particle šī arose from a Proto-Semitic demonstrative or presentative, not along a unidirectional cline but through a potentially overlapping series of lateral shifts, changes, neither more nor less grammatical, representing movement on the cline but not up or down it. The development of negative -š in Arabic conforms to Croft’s negative-indefinite cycle, not Jespersen’s.
