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The interrogative origin of the Arabic negator –š: Evidence from copular interrogation in Andalusi Arabic, Maltese, and modern spoken Egyptian and Moroccan Arabic


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DOI https://doi.org/10.13173/zeitarabling.58.0005




That many Arabic dialects negate with an enclitic –š has attracted much comment, very often drawing analogies between the French and Arabic systems. Constructs negated with a post-positioned negative –š alone without the characteristically Arabic preposed negator are said to bear similarities to stage III of the Jespersen's cycle as it operates in Indo-European languages. Nevertheless, comparisons between the copular interrogatives anīš or anāš and huwāš in medieval Andalusi Arabic, their 19th century Maltese counterparts jeniex and hujex, their survivals in modern Maltese huwa and hux, and their relics in the modern spoken Moroccan Arabic interrogative waš, and its equivalents huwwa/hiyya/humma in spoken Egyptian Arabic call such assumptions into question. From those, it appears that the enclitic –š began as an interrogative, having lost much – but not all – of its interrogative quality as it was reanalysed as a negator. As such, Arabic negation never went through a Jespersen's cycle.

Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages, American University of Beirut, Bliss Street, Hamra, Lebanon.

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