Arabic Indefinites, Interrogatives, and Negators: A Linguistic History of Western Dialects (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics) 9780198718123, 0198718128

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Arabic Indefinites, Interrogatives, and Negators

OXFORD STUDIES IN DIACHRONIC AND HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS general editors Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts, University of Cambridge advisory editors Cynthia Allen, Australian National University; Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, University of Manchester; Theresa Biberauer, University of Cambridge; Charlotte Galves, University of Campinas; Geoff Horrocks, University of Cambridge; Paul Kiparsky, Stanford University; Anthony Kroch, University of Pennsylvania; David Lightfoot, Georgetown University; Giuseppe Longobardi, University of York; David Willis, University of Cambridge recently published in the series 7 Word Order in Old Italian Cecilia Poletto 8 Diachrony and Dialects Grammatical Change in the Dialects of Italy Edited by Paola Benincà, Adam Ledgeway, and Nigel Vincent 9 Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages Edited by Chiara Ghezzi and Piera Molinelli 10 Vowel Length from Latin to Romance Michele Loporcaro 11 The Evolution of Functional Left Peripheries in Hungarian Syntax Edited by Katalin É. Kiss 12 Syntactic Reconstruction and Proto-Germanic George Walkden 13 The History of Low German Negation Anne Breitbarth 14 Arabic Indefinites, Interrogatives, and Negators A Linguistic History of Western Dialects David Wilmsen

Arabic Indefinites, Interrogatives, and Negators A Linguistic History of Western Dialects

DAVID WILMSEN

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # David Wilmsen 2014 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2014 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2014937425 ISBN 978–0–19–871812–3 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, cr0 4yy Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

To my beloved wife Nadia, who bemusedly tolerates my obsession with tiny details of language, gamely lending me her insights into the varieties of her native Jordanian Arabic.

Contents Series preface List of figures and tables Transcription and notation 1. Introduction: Theory, conventions, and the assessment of facts 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

Arabic in linguistic theory A facts-first approach to theory and a theory-free approach to facts A guide to the perplexing: chapter summaries A coming to terms A repayment of debts

2. On the age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars: An unresolved question 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6

Old and New Arabic New Arabic is old Retentions and innovations Shared Semitic retentions Shared dialectal retentions In conclusion, the way forward

3. fīš wa biddīš: The functions of šī 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10

Tracing the origin and development of the pseudo-verb biddThe -š of biddīš Conventional views Grammaticalization of šay Partitive ši Polar interrogative ši Rhetorically negative ši Negative ši Distribution of ši Conclusion

x xi xii 1 4 7 9 12 19 21 22 24 28 29 36 39 44 46 49 50 50 51 53 56 57 59 63

viii

Contents

4. Andalusi Arabic negators and interrogatives: Early evidence of grammatical ši 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7

64

Indefinite and negative ši in Andalusi Arabic A Jespersen’s Cycle? Interrogative or negative iš? Rhetorical questions in Arabic Arabic interrogatives as exclamatives Orthographic idiosyncrasies Conclusion

66 70 72 75 79 81 87

5. Interrogation and negation with ši in North African and Levantine Arabic

90

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

Shared retentions in Andalusi Arabic, North African Arabic, and Maltese Copular interrogatives in modern North African dialects A Hōrāni case study ˙ Hōrāni analogues in other Arabic varieties ˙ Conclusion

6. Origins of grammatical ši: Southern Arabia or the Levant? 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9

Possible origins A shared West Semitic innovation Genera and geography Dialects with and without negative ši A pre-diaspora southern Arab presence in the Fertile Crescent Arab Christians in the pre-Islamic Fertile Crescent An ancient Arab presence in the Fertile Crescent Levantine or Yemeni? Conclusion

7. Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins of grammatical ši 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10

Early evidence of negator -š The Semitics of ši Implications for Arabic Implications for theory Processes of grammaticalization Degrammaticalization of ši Derivational pathways of grammatical ši A reassertion of theory: Croft’s Cycle, not Jespersen’s A reaffirmation of an assumption: negating with mā is early Conclusion

92 96 102 110 115 119 120 124 126 127 130 133 137 140 146 148 149 154 161 163 164 167 169 173 176 177

Contents 8. On explanation and theory in Arabic linguistics 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4

Formal approaches to Arabic: mistaken, misplaced, and misguided Formal approaches to grammatical ši Negator -š and negative polarity Conclusion

Afterword Appendix: Points of divergence between written and spoken Arabic References Index

ix 180 180 188 198 204 209 214 216 239

Series preface Modern diachronic linguistics has important contacts with other subdisciplines, notably first-language acquisition, learnability theory, computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, and the traditional philological study of texts. It is now recognized in the wider field that diachronic linguistics can make a novel contribution to linguistic theory, to historical linguistics, and arguably to cognitive science more widely. This series provides a forum for work in both diachronic and historical linguistics, including work on change in grammar, sound, and meaning within and across languages; synchronic studies of languages in the past; and descriptive histories of one or more languages. It is intended to reflect and encourage the links between these subjects and fields such as those mentioned above. The goal of the series is to publish high-quality monographs and collections of papers in diachronic linguistics generally, i.e. studies focusing on change in linguistic structure and/or change in grammars, which are also intended to make a contribution to linguistic theory, by developing and adopting a current theoretical model, by raising wider questions concerning the nature of language change, or by developing theoretical connections with other areas of linguistics and cognitive science as listed above. There is no bias towards a particular language or language family, or towards a particular theoretical framework; work in all theoretical frameworks, and work based on the descriptive tradition of language typology, as well as quantitatively based work using theoretical ideas, also feature in the series. Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts University of Cambridge

List of figures and tables Figures 4.1 Affixed -ši in two stanzas of al-Našar’s al-Šuštarī 4.2 Orthography of pronouns in three Andalusi works 4.3 Proverbs 103, 112, 113, and 269 of Bencherifa’s al-Zajjālī showing vowel placement with ‫ ﺍﺵ‬a 4.4 Vowel placement of the first two instances of ‫ ﺍﺵ‬in de Gunzburg’s Ibn Quzmān

68 70 73 82

4.5 de Gunzburg’s Ibn Quzmān showing three variant spellings of ‫ ﺍﺵ‬a 4.6 Interrogative āš in Ahwānī’s Ibn ʿĀsim ˙ 7.1 A conjectural grammaticalization cline from negative mā biddīš to biddīš

82 84 151

7.2 A conjectural cline from interrogative ʾa . . . š to negative ʾa 7.3 Distribution of negator ʾa in northern Levantine dialects

152 153

7.4 Sequence for the development of Arabic grammatical -š 166 7.5 Implicit derivational sequence of three functions from the word for ‘thing’ 170 7.6 Sequence for the derivation of the substantive šV

171

Tables 2.1 Semitic personal pronouns with /t/

38

5.1 Copular interrogatives in 19th-century Maltese 5.2 Copular negation in six Arabic dialects

92 101

5.3 Copular negation in 19th- and 20th-century Maltese 5.4 Verbal negation types occurring in al-Khirbeh

101 105

5.5 Pseudo-verb negation types occurring in al-Khirbeh

105

5.6 The pseudo-verb għand in 19th-century Maltese 5.7 Interrogation and negation with the pseudo-verb ʿand in Tunisian Arabic

110

6.1 Functions of reflexes of ši in Yemeni dialects 7.1 Independent 3rd person pronouns in various Semitic languages

122 155

7.2 Affixed 3rd person pronouns in various Semitic languages 7.3 Akkadian demonstrative pronouns

155 157

7.4 Akkadian determiner-relative-indefinite pronouns

157

7.5 Sargonic Akkadian relative pronouns

158

112

Transcription and notation The transcription symbols in this work are amongst those in wide use in Arabic linguistics works, differing slightly from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Consonants Arabic letter

IPA

This work

‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﺏ‬ ‫ﺕ‬ ‫ﺙ‬ ‫ﺝ‬ ‫ﺡ‬ ‫ﺥ‬ ‫ﺩ‬ ‫ﺫ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ ‫ﺯ‬ ‫ﺱ‬ ‫ﺵ‬ ‫ﺹ‬ ‫ﺽ‬ ‫ﻁ‬ ‫ﻅ‬ ‫ﻉ‬ ‫ﻍ‬ ‫ﻑ‬ ‫ﻕ‬ ‫ﻙ‬ ‫ﻝ‬ ‫ﻡ‬ ‫ﻥ‬ ‫ﻩ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﻯ‬

ʔ b t θ d͡ʒ ħ x d ð r z s ʃ sʕ dʕ tʕ ðʕ ʕ ɣ f q k l m n h w y

ʾ b t t gˇ h ˙ x d d r z s š s ˙ d ˙ t ˙ z ˙ ʿ ġ f q k l m n h w y

Transcription and notation

xiii

Consonantal variants In addition to these, allophones [g] and [ž] (IPAʒ) of various regional dialects, represented orthographically by the Arabic letter {‫}ﺝ‬, will sometimes appear, as will the regionally variable allophones [g] and [ʾ] represented by the Arabic letter {‫}ﻕ‬ (IPA q). When the discussion turns to Maltese, a so-called peripheral Arabic dialect, the situation is complicated by Maltese orthography, especially in its representation of the sound [š] (IPA ʃ), which is represented as {x} in that language’s orthography as currently practised by its literate speakers. When citing examples from grammars of Maltese, the orthography of those works will be retained. Otherwise, in discussion of its historical implications, the symbol /š/ will be used, as it is elsewhere throughout the work. In addition to that, Maltese words ultimately deriving from parent Arabic forms containing the sound [ʿ] have generally lost that sound in the language as younger educated people from the major urban areas of the main island currently speak it. A historical remnant of the underlying sound nevertheless remains in the orthography as {għ}. That grapheme, too, appears in the work in citations from the writings about the language. Finally, the discussion eventually hinges upon a Modern South Arabian (MSA) sibilant, usually represented as /ś/ in descriptions of Semitic languages, which usage is retained in this work; this symbol corresponds to the IPA /ɬ/. Languages

IPA

This work

Arabic dialects Arabic dialects Maltese Maltese MSA

d͡ʒ q ʕ ʃ ɬ

g/ž ʾ/g għ x/š ś

Vowels Arabic vowels are highly variable, their quality affected by regional accent and by consonantal environment among other causes. As this is not a phonological study, such variation is kept to a minimum in the notation, with the short vowels generally being represented as [a], [i], [u] and the long as [ā], [ī], [ū], roughly corresponding to the way they are conceived in writing. Vowel length means exactly that: the length of time the vowel is held. Inasmuch as this is a study of Arabic dialects, with Egyptian, Levantine, and North African varieties figuring largely in it, the dialectal variants [e], [ē], and [ō] along with the unstressed vowel [@] often appear. The long and short vowel representations in this work correspond to the IPA symbols as follows.

xiv

Transcription and notation

This work

IPA

English approximant

a e i u ā ē ī ō ū

æ e i ʊ a: e: i: O̝ u:

sat set seat put pan there three throat through

Other notation The linguistic notation is kept to a minimum, except where others’ examples are cited, when their notation is almost always retained as they have presented it, sometimes adapted slightly. Where necessary, the following abbreviations and notations are used: 1 2 3 f m pl s * < >/=>

1st person 2nd person 3rd person feminine masculine plural singular hypothesized proto-form (rarely a putatively ungrammatical form) derived from becomes

With reference to linguistic features, brackets are used as follows: [š] /š/ {š/‫}ﺵ‬ (š)

phonetic transcription phonemic transcription grapheme optional reading or rendering

When the running gloss of a single Arabic word requires more than one word in the gloss, the words are joined by a point, for example, as follows: qāl he.said

Transcription and notation

xv

In citations of others’ glosses, matter enclosed between square brackets indicates an interpretation or rendering not appearing in the original citation; otherwise square brackets are an indication of material added for clarity in rendering my own glosses. It scarcely needs mentioning that material enclosed in square brackets in quotes is added for clarity.

Other abbreviations AH FA

MSA

anno hegirae; the beginning of the Muslim calendar (Year 1 AH = ad 622/23) fusḥ̣ ā Arabic (from al-luġa al-ʿarabiyya al-fusḥ ̣ā ‘the most eloquent Arabic language’); any form of Arabic, ancient or modern, written or declaimed, that conforms to (or is perceived as conforming to) the grammatical rules of Arabic codified between the 8th and 10th centuries ad. Modern South Arabian

1 Introduction Theory, conventions, and the assessment of facts ‫ﺃﻧﻚ ﻻ ﺗﺴﺘﻄﻴﻊ ﺍﻟﻌﺒﺎﺭﺓ ﻋﻦ ﺣﺎﺟﺎﺗﻚ ﻭﺍﻹﺑﺎﻧﺔ ﻋﻦ ﻣﺄﺭﺑﻚ ﺇﻻ ﺑﺎﻟﻠﺴﺎﻥ‬ ‫ﻭﻫﺬﺍﻥ ﰲ ﺍﻟﻌﺎﺟﻞ ﻭﺍﻵﺟﻞ ﻣﻊ ﺃﺷﻴﺎﺀ ﻛﺜﻴﺮﺓ ﻟﻮ ﻳﻨﺤﻮﻫﺎ ﺍﻹﻧﺴﺎﻥ‬ ‫ﻟﻮﺟﺪﻫﺎ ﰲ ﺍﳌﻌﻘﻮﻝ ﻣﻮﺟﻮﺩﺓ‬ ‫ﻭﰲ ﺍﳌﺤﺼﻮﻝ ﻣﻌﻠﻮﻣﺔ‬ ‫ﻭﻋﻨﺪ ﺍﻟﺤﻘﺎﺋﻖ ﻣﺸﺘﻬﺮﺓ‬ ‫ﻭﰲ ﺍﻟﺘﺪﺑﻴﺮ ﻇﺎﻫﺮﺓ‬ You cannot express your needs and ambitions except with the tongue. Ultimately, those, along with many things, were people to seek them, They would find them comprehensible, Obtainable, factual, and measurable. al-Jāhiz Rasāʾ il Part 4: Risāla 24 ˙ ˙

This study examines the current manifestations, and what can be deduced of the history and prehistory, of an individual grammatical feature of Arabic. Negation with an enclitic -š, or in some environments a loosely bound clitic ši, appears in many spoken vernacular varieties of Arabic over a broad dialect area stretching from the southern Levant, the Nile Valley and Delta, all across littoral North Africa, and includes varieties from the Yemen and Oman. Spoken varieties of Arabic in these regions negate with variations on a theme, most with a discontinuous morpheme mā . . . š (viz: katab ‘he wrote’ > mā-katab-š ‘he didn’t write’), but others, under some conditions, such as, emblematically, the Palestinian, with a post-positive -š alone (fī ‘there is’ > ƒī-š ‘there is not’ bidd-i ‘I want’ > biddī-š ‘I don’t want’). More correctly, the study begins by examining negation with š/šī, for, in the process of exploring the antecedents of this feature, central to the syntax of most of those varieties in which it prevails, it becomes necessary to expand the scope of observation to include interrogation and indefinite marking with the same morphemes (š/šī), exploring the causal link between these phonologically similar but functionally distinct phenomena. For it happens that if some varieties of Arabic

2

Introduction

negating with reflexes of /š/ also utilize šī to mark indefiniteness, a great many more varieties of Arabic, those negating with mā . . . š or a post-positive -š alone and those negating with a pre-positioned mā alone, use them in some form to pose questions. Interrogatives formed with a reflex of /š/ are pervasive, asking the question ‘what?’ with interrogatives such as āš, ayš, ēš, and iš; āš huwwa, ašu, and šū; or āšinhaw, āšnūa, šinhu, šīnu, and šnu. Less variable and equally widespread is the question ‘why?’ formed with variants on a preposition l- ‘to/for’ and aš: lāš, layš, lēš, and lešnu (in North African varieties, ʿ laš). In many other interrogatives across a wide range of spoken Arabic varieties, a reflex of /š/ plays a role, for example waqtāš or šwaqt ‘when?’ (< waqt ‘time’ + interrogative /š/) and qaddāš or šqadd ‘how much?’ (< qadd ‘measure, quantity, size’ + interrogative /š/). Indeed, it is in interrogation and negation that the grammars of most spoken varieties of Arabic and those of written Arabic diverge dramatically.1 For, whereas written Arabic poses a ‘what’ question with a common Semitic mā, spoken Arabic vernaculars generally negate with that same particle. That older Arabic of the written variety may do so too, and that modern written Arabic will admit negation with it in certain constrained contexts, has provided impetus for speculations that negation with mā and a discontinuous -š in many spoken varieties, primarily those of the southern and south-western Arabian Peninsula, the southern Levant, and North Africa, descended from an older variety of Arabic that did not negate with a suffixed -š, and that the spoken dialects that do are all relatively new (albeit about 1,000 years old) by comparison with this presumed older variety, sometimes conflated with an original form. This study contests all aspects of that notion: that the spoken dialects of Arabic are relatively new, sharing a common descent from the Arabic of writing, and that interrogation and negation with reflexes of /š/ are later innovations in those varieties in which they appear. In tracing the origins of those reflexes, we shall find that interrogative /š/ must be ancient and negating with it may be too, and that, as a consequence, the modern spoken varieties of Arabic that negate with its reflexes cannot be descended directly from the parent variety of the Arabic of modern and classical writing. Properly speaking a study of grammatical š/šī, the book is intended first for Arabists, especially those of a linguistic bent, but also for any who may ever have wondered about interrogation and negation with reflexes of /š/, how they began and whence they came, and, indeed, for those who may wish for evidence of the age of the dialects. It is secondly addressed to language theorists. This is not to say that it advocates a particular theory. Quite the contrary: in attempting to explain the phenomena, it demonstrates that various theories as they have been applied to Arabic fail to account for the facts, indeed sometimes delimiting the discussion and conclusions to commonplaces, conventions, and speculations. Perhaps foremost amongst 1 The appendix presents a schematic comparison of the techniques of interrogation and negation between the Arabic of writing and the spoken vernaculars.

Introduction

3

these is the speculation, conveniently falling under the theoretical stance often called ‘grammaticalization’, that reflexes of /š/ are ultimately derived from one of the Arabic words for ‘thing’ (šayʾ) in a series of steps in a process whereby content words are withdrawn from the lexicon; divested of referential meaning; and lent an analytical, that is to say grammatical, function. The notion that reflexes of /š/ derive ultimately from the Arabic content word šayʾ appears to fit intuitively into a scheme of grammaticalization. Such an assumption is dutifully repeated both in historical accounts of the phenomena and in synchronic attempts at descriptions of its place in the grammar of Arabic—the latter usually without appealing to grammaticalization per se—those repeating it often drawing an analogy between a supposed development in Arabic from negating with mā to a discontinuous mā . . . š and the French move from negating with ne alone to ne . . . pas in what has been called ‘Jespersen’s cycle’ operating in European languages, itself being what van Kemenade calls a ‘schoolbook case of grammaticalization’ (2000: 58). In one of the few major contributions to the study of grammaticalization applied to Arabic, Esseesy (2010: 11–13)—without, however, invoking Jespersen’s cycle—makes just this assumption. Meanwhile, Lucas (2007; 2009) has made the case for a Jespersen’s cycle operating in Arabic negation explicit. Upon examination, however, the assumption cannot hold. Little evidence in the Arabic language writ large—in any of its spoken vernaculars or in the Arabic of writing—supports such a scenario, and such evidence as does exist is all circumstantial, based upon superficial appearance alone. Through examining living Arabic dialects and the historical record of older varieties of Arabic, this book presents a more reliable, evidence-based accounting for the origin and development of grammatical /š/, for, true to the precepts of grammaticalization, older forms and their newer grammaticalizations remain present in languages, providing clues to the process, whereby the pathways of change remain (to some degree at least) transparent. Indeed, these could only be detectable in the presence of other, presumably older, relict forms. The remnants of the change from lexical to grammatical are apparent in a vast array of languages and across a broad spectrum of lexical and grammatical words. Theorists of grammaticalization Heine and Kuteva (2002) have compiled an entire dictionary of such forms. This principle can be profitably exploited in explaining a grammatical feature such as interrogation and negation with reflexes of /š/ in Arabic dialects, which in aggregate exhibit ancestral stages of the process. Nevertheless, as widespread as the feature is in the Arabic dialects, a comprehensive comparison of the individual phenomena in all dialects has rarely been attempted, Obler (1975) being the sole noteworthy exception.2 Indeed, focusing on the varying phenomena in localized dialects or dialect areas independently and in isolation has perhaps partially 2 While making some mention of negation with -š in peninsular varieties of Arabic, Lucas (2009) largely restricts himself to a consideration of Levantine and North African vernaculars, including Maltese.

4

Introduction

contributed to a superficial treatment of the phenomena. Attempting to force the facts of negation and interrogation into preconceived theoretical frameworks has surely done so as well. A third fundamental principle in theoretical accounts of grammaticalization is that such processes are irreversible or, as the theory has it, ‘unidirectional’, on the assumption that once a content word loses referential meaning, it can generally not regain it. Working against a reversal of the process are the fundamental differences between content words and grammatical markers. Content words belong to open classes and refer to activities and other concepts in the environment, be they the physical surroundings or the conceptual and discourse universe of speakers. For their part, grammatical markers are structural, always belong to closed classes, and function by organizing information in the discourse. Apparently once a word loses its referential meaning and enters a closed class of grammatical items, it cannot escape. Nevertheless, the principle of unidirectionality of grammatical change is not absolute; instances of reversal, while rare and not always uncontroversial, have been demonstrated, and they pose a significant enough challenge to grammaticalization theory to merit a name of their own: degrammaticalization (Norde 2009). We shall discover that this principle, too, applies to the Arabic word for ‘thing’ in the history of interrogation and negation with reflexes of /š/.

1.1 Arabic in linguistic theory Recent applications of grammaticalization theory to Arabic notwithstanding, with a few exceptions, Arabic has largely remained outside the ken of language theorists for the latter half of the 20th century, when linguistics itself acquired something of a trail-blazing cachet. That alone may have consigned Arabic studies to the dusty shelves of the library, for it does retain something of a 19th-century air of antiquarian arcana about it. Even if Arabic had earlier enjoyed the attention of those labouring in the field of language study, that came largely for its close relationship to the languages of the Old and New Testaments and its being, in terms of its number of speakers and in its number of surviving texts, including modern writings, the largest representative of the family to which those, mostly Semitic, languages belong. At the time, some eminent scholars, outstanding linguists of their own day, working within or having training in the field of comparative Semitics lent their considerable acumen to the study of Arabic (and in the process to the understanding of the Semitic languages), contributing insights gained from the Semitic languages to the broader field of linguistics.3

3 Aronoff (1994: 3) speculates, ‘it may well be that all Western linguistic morphology is directly rooted in the Semitic grammatical tradition.’

Arabic in linguistic theory

5

Since the middle of the 20th century, however, Semitics, and along with it the study of Arabic, has turned—or been turned—into a side road of linguistics, there largely pursuing its own aims with but incidental regard for what the rest of the language sciences were doing. Along the way, it seems that Semitic studies and Arabic studies have themselves parted company, each to pursue its own destination along that side road, not ignoring each other’s progress along their respective journeys, but generally tending toward their own objectives, each casting an occasional glance at the other, as travellers in separate vehicles are wont to do when overtaking and passing each other along the same highway. An impetus for their taking this route was occasioned by what has often been regarded as a revolution in the field of linguistics proper, beginning just after mid-century with the publication of something of a manifesto on the study of syntax by a student of the Semiticist Zellig Harris, a widely influential linguist who left enduring marks on the field, perhaps none more indelible than his fostering the career of his star pupil, who lent his name to the change of paradigm: the ‘Chomskyan Revolution’.4 With that, linguistics appeared for a time to concentrate upon a study of English—probably because it was the native (or at least common) language of most of the people working in the new direction charted by the revolutionaries—in developing a theoretical framework upon which to build observations, descriptions, and explanations of how language works, with a strong emphasis on syntax, the study of which came to dominate linguistics in its search for language universals.5 This was bound to shunt the study of Arabic or Semitics onto a siding, for one of the guiding principles of this new science of syntax was an almost militant synchronicity, whereas the study of Semitic languages is perforce fundamentally diachronic, for the large part studying languages that are no longer spoken but are only represented by the surviving texts that their speakers have left behind. For its part, Arabic, with its hundreds of millions of speakers, remains very much alive, and has enjoyed the serious attention of western researchers from the 17th century onwards, in an earlier period, mostly for the insight its living usage can bring to the study of its mostly extinct relatives (McCarus 1992). Over that period, works about Arabic have largely been descriptive, often undertaken from the perspective of historical linguistics or dialectology. Nevertheless, after the ‘revolution’ in linguistics, For a critical retrospective on the ‘revolution’, see the contributions in Kibbee (2010). Van Valin (2000) notes the inherent limitations of the theory in which principles of English grammar are still reflected in many of its crucial assumptions, demonstrating that it is incapable of explaining structures in languages like Barai, Dyirbal, Lakota, (Argentine) Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Warlpiri, or Yidiŋ. Writing specifically about the indigenous languages of the Pacific Rim, Mühlhäusler (1999: 331) identifies some of the ‘debits’ of this theoretical stance, resulting in what he calls the ‘linguistic imperialism’ of English and other dominant languages: ‘the practice of taking English as the point of departure or even the only point of reference for establishing universals has led to an implied denigration of linguistic diversity. Such studies of traditional languages that have occurred have been in the manner of selective ransacking for confirmation of general principles rather than anything else.’ One of the themes of this book will be that the same sort of theoretical blinkering affects analyses of Arabic. 4 5

6

Introduction

works addressing Arabic informed by the new theoretical orientation eventually began to appear. These, however, have been relatively few, exercising little influence on the direction of Arabic studies as a whole, or for that matter on the direction of linguistic theory.6 What is more, regardless of their adopting a synchronic perspective on language, these theoretical works appear to be obliged to approach their topic with some reference to the historical setting of Arabic and its development, for they almost always draw comparisons between the spoken varieties under study—often the native languages of the researchers, or based in fieldwork or some other evidence that researchers have gathered from living speakers of an Arabic variety—and the Arabic of writing, no longer the vernacular language of anyone, if it ever was. Indeed, some of the works about Arabic adopting the tools and traditions of the Chomskyan Revolution treat that variety of writing alone, without however making too many claims about the implicit diachronicity in the focus of their study. Regardless, a historical perspective is impossible to avoid when examining Arabic. For, looming large in any discussion of the language is the historical memory of its long literary tradition, dating to the 8th century ad, the 2nd century of Arab Islamic civilization (ah for anno hegirae, or year of the hegira), when the first manuscripts written in Arabic began to appear and the oral literature of pre-Islamic poetry and the Qur’ān from the preceding centuries were committed to writing.7 As a consequence, any study of Arabic must acknowledge, if only implicitly, the dramatic changes that are seen to have taken place in the language over the succeeding millennium and longer. Accompanying this realization is the conviction that the language is much older than the mere seventeen centuries of its attested history. Nevertheless, this temporal depth may present little difficulty to a purely synchronic and ‘formal’ accounting of the properties of Arabic,8 for most such accounts do not deign to address the historical development of Arabic, even while accepting some accounts of that history as true. Formal attempts at explaining language, however, precisely because of their strict synchronicity, have until recently not often undertaken to explain variation and change in language; first, because variation arises from forces external to syntax, in which formal accountings have characteristically taken little interest, and second,

6

This despite a work on Semitic linguistics having been cited in a seminal text in theoretical linguistics (Malone 2002: 44–5). 7 A single manuscript of the Qur’ān dates to the first half of the 7th century (Sadeghi and Bergmann 2010). 8 For the sake of simplicity, reference to the dichotomy between approaches to the study of language in what has been seen since the Chomskyan Revolution as the difference between the study of linguistic competence and performance (some may say model-oriented vs. data-driven) will be expressed as the difference between ‘formal’ and ‘functional’ approaches to linguistic explanation. For definitions and defences of the two approaches, see the contributions of Noonan (1999) and Lasnik (1999). For a detailed defence of the explanatory efficacy of the functional and a critique of the formal approaches, see Haspelmath (2002; 2004). An entire issue of Studies in Language (2004, no. 3) is devoted to a debate between proponents of both approaches.

A facts-first and theory-free approach

7

because language change is for similar reasons dynamic, arising out of speakers’ interactions with each other and with their social settings in real time, while formal approaches treat syntax as atemporal and static (Noonan 1999: 20–21). For that reason, the very historical depth of Arabic (or any language with a similarly lengthy history of documentation, for that matter, even English) must present some difficulties to formal approaches to syntax. For changes in the grammar of the language, even in the Arabic of writing, which is held by some to be unchangeable, are obvious and have been documented and collated.9 Because of its claim to account for the development of grammatical features, a theory of grammaticalization has been posed as a foil to formal accountings of syntax; but formal linguistics has begun to acknowledge grammaticalization, attempting to accommodate its precepts to formal accountings of language, all the while taking little heed of Arabic. This does not mean that there have been no formal treatments of Arabic; on the contrary, some working squarely within the field of Arabic linguistics approach their study from within a formal framework. These formal treatments of Arabic can scarcely afford to ignore interrogation and negation in Arabic, and they do attempt to account for the occurrence of a negative -š in the dialects where it is used. This book will engage their treatments of the subject. Most of that engagement comes in a later chapter, but implicit in the argumentation throughout the book is that a strictly synchronic approach such as that advocated by formal linguists cannot account for all the facts of negation in varieties of Arabic employing the technique of interrogating and negating with -š. It appears to be especially difficult to account for both the phenomenon of negation and interrogation in their manifold manifestations of a reflex of /š/. Synchronic and diachronic accounts of Arabic alike tend to treat those as separate processes—even while proposing a common origin for both in an Arabic word for ‘thing’—whereas similarity in form obliges us to seek a common process and earlier origin for the two functions (if those can be found) before attempting to motivate those distinct roles along late and divergent routes.

1.2 A facts-first approach to theory and a theory-free approach to facts All of this comes by way of asserting that the approach to the facts of language adopted here is functional and data-driven as opposed to the model-oriented approach of formal linguistics. If we are contending with a feature that to all appearances developed out of an older form within a language, earlier usage, if accessible, cannot be ignored, and the only way to ascertain that is to consider its representation in the earliest texts where examples of it may be found, making comparisons between those and current 9 Esseesy (2010) documents changes in the use of prepositions and subordinators in writing occurring over a millennium.

8

Introduction

usages. The formal linguist’s technique of discovery and explanation cannot be expected to produce results, for it is based in current usage alone, along with insights into that usage drawn from the researcher’s own introspective intuitions or the intuitions of a few informants. Current speakers of a language cannot be expected to provide introspective intuitions about earlier usage, or at least not reliable ones (this does not rule out their veracity, it simply means that such explanations are arrived at by suspect means; one may be right for the wrong reasons). Formal linguists would probably counter that they are applying the considerable weight of theory in order to arrive at explanations of current or former states of the language alike. The approach adopted here differs by considering the facts before ascertaining whether and how they may fit with theory. This, in turn, does not mean that the book is an attempt at explanation free of theoretical speculations. One cannot escape the influence of the accumulated thinking in the field (any field) in conducting investigations and reaching conclusions. Nor would one wish to: The historical linguist must make use of insights provided by the theory of grammar or, more precisely, by the various theories for grammar that have been developed on the synchronic level, because he needs these insights as tools to tackle his data . . . A historical linguist who works without an explicit formal theory is in danger of interpreting the data in the light of what the language later becomes, or in the light of his own necessarily restricted intuitions . . . On the other hand, a historical linguist who bases himself too exclusively on a particular theory may come to suggest an interpretation of the historical data that can only be called an oversimplification of its complex nature or even worse can lead to the neglect of relevant and by no means incidental facts. (Fischer 2004: 712–13)

Where Arabic interrogation and negation with /š/ are concerned, formal and functional theorizing have both fallen into these snares, by interpreting the data in the light of what the language has become or in the light of intuitions about how the language now operates, both leading to an oversimplification and neglect of relevant facts. Even worse, they make assertions about the development of the language or its modern state based upon superficial similarities. This work avoids those pitfalls by examining Arabic interrogation and negation with reflexes of /š/, in those varieties where they occur, grounded in an assessment of the facts, as far as those may be determined. If any theoretical term may be applied to the orientation adopted here, it would be ‘grammaticalization’, and especially the principal process within that body of theorizing, ‘reanalysis’ as it is defined by Campbell and Mixco (2007: 165–6):10 ‘a change in which the structure of a linguistic element, usually syntactic 10 Harris and Campbell (1995: 61–96) provide discussion and many examples, clarifying that the change ‘does not involve any modification of [the element’s] surface manifestation’ instead affecting its underlying structure, seen as including at least its constituency, hierarchical structure, category labels, and grammatical relations’ (p. 50).

A guide to the perplexing

9

or morphological . . . is assigned a different structure from what it formerly had.’ The language of definition leaves out that it is actual speakers of the language who are doing the assigning, be it as young learners acquiring their native tongue or as adult speakers reanalysing syntactic categories already in use. Formal linguists would favour the former (van Kemenade 2000), while functionalists would at least be willing to consider the latter. To historical linguists, it scarcely matters who performs the reanalysis, and indeed, happily both groups can fit into a historical linguistics scenario (but see Croft 2010, who advocates the latter). Thus relieved of a need to make a firm commitment to either theoretical perspective,11 but withal remaining within a data-driven orientation, this study shows that a diachronic, historical perspective is necessary to explain adequately how this particular syntactic feature, interrogation and negation with -š, came to be as it is. Within Arabic studies proper, it situates itself in a historical linguistic trend whose proponents are becoming more vocal in Arabic linguistics—one that claims that the spoken varieties of Arabic must be old, that the evidence for this derives from a comparative framework within and amongst Arabic varieties and in a broader context of comparative Semitics, offering itself as a contribution to a growing body of work within that trend.

1.3 A guide to the perplexing: chapter summaries Accordingly, Chapter 2 challenges a reigning paradigm in Arabic studies: that an older form of Arabic, more or less corresponding to the Arabic of classical writing, is the ultimate source of the spoken Arabic vernaculars as well as the source of individual features within them. Setting the scene by discussing some provocative recent work indicating that the spoken vernaculars are not directly descended from what is often called ‘Old Arabic’ or ‘Classical Arabic’, appearing some time after the middle of the 7th century ad, but are themselves quite old, it introduces two themes that will be contested in the book: the commonly held supposition about the development of grammatical /š/, which holds that it ultimately derives from one of the Classical Arabic words for ‘thing’ šayʾ , and the notion that the progression from pre-positioned mā as a negator to a discontinuous negator mā . . . š, ending in a purely post-positive -š, finds an analogy in the French ne . . . pas, with the colloquial French tendency to rely upon pas alone and the Arabic tendency to negate with a postpositive -š alone both seen as exhibiting a terminal stage of Jespersen’s cycle. Chapter 3 begins by demonstrating, with data drawn from an electronic corpus of medieval and modern Arabic writing, that no evidence supports the contention that grammatical /š/ derived from the word for ‘thing’. From there, it begins to form an 11 For some disquiet with the precepts of grammaticalization as applied to Arabic, see the review of Esseesy in Wilmsen (2011).

10

Introduction

alternate view, examining the functions of šī as a ‘partitive’ or indefinite determiner, a polar interrogative, and a negator in the Arabic varieties in which it appears, concluding that the origins of grammatical šī probably did not arise directly from the word for ‘thing’, and suggesting instead that its beginnings are to be found in its modern usage as an indefinite determiner and an interrogative. Here is introduced another quality of a reflex of šī, as an existential particle, which will be queried more closely in subsequent chapters. Chapter 4 examines the earliest documentation of šī as an indefinite quantifier, interrogative, and negator in historical Arabic writings, finding a few instances in the colloquial Arabic poetry and proverbs of 13th- and 14th-century Arab Spain, where the first documentation of unambiguous indefinite determiners and negators with -š appear. Much of the chapter is devoted to disputing a point with the great scholar of Spanish Arabic, Federico Corriente, who, along with some of his students, interprets as a negator an Andalusian Arabic word iš analogous to other dialectal Arabic interrogatives of the form aš/ayš/ēš/iš. Corriente and his students appear to interpret their few instances of this peculiar ‘negator’ as a syntactic change in progress in later Andalusian Arabic, one prematurely brought to a halt by the success of the Reconquista, after which Arabic went into decline as a spoken language in the Iberian Peninsula. A logical conclusion to Corriente’s unique negator in some of its manifestations (a conclusion that he does not entertain) is that the Andalusian dialects of Arabic, or at least some of them, may actually have passed through Jespersen’s cycle and have reached a terminal stage, in which negation is effected with a post-positive -š alone. On the other hand, viewing the word as having remained as an interrogative, withal sometimes peculiarly configured, leads to a different conclusion altogether. Reinterpreted, Corriente’s negator provides a clue to an interrogative origin of negating with reflexes of /š/. Chapter 5 begins by comparing two of those peculiarly configured interrogatives from Andalusian writing with their analogues in 18th- and 19th-century Maltese (a language derived from the Arabic spoken in 7th–9th-century North Africa), drawing correspondences between those and similar forms in modern Tunisian Arabic, and concluding that they are actually polar interrogatives, forming yes/no questions. Polar questions posed with a post-positive -š continue to operate in Tunisian Arabic in a manner exactly analogous to the way they had operated in 18th- and 19th-century Maltese; the few instances of analogous interrogatives of Andalusi Arabic give reason to suppose that the same sort of interrogation obtained in some dialects of Iberian Arabic. Viewing the situation this way permits forming a new perspective on negating with š, and in the process solves a puzzling problem in Arabic linguistics: the vexed question of copular interrogatives, especially in Egyptian Arabic but also in Moroccan Arabic, which are formed with 3rd person pronouns and are effectively interrogatives posing the question ‘Is it that . . . ?’

A guide to the perplexing

11

From there, an argument is brought against the proposition that negating with post-positive -š alone arose separately as an innovation in the several varieties in which it appears, as asserted in some modern studies of the phenomenon. It is argued that such assertions fail to adopt a sufficiently comparative diachronic perspective, assigning significance to the inter-dialectal differences between modern spoken Palestinian and Egyptian Arabic or spoken Palestinian and Moroccan Arabic, when, to the contrary, irrespective of such recent differences, the similarities in structure and function point to a common origin, the differences between varieties arising as mere historical accidents. This is illustrated by data adduced from an examination of a Druze variety of spoken Arabic of the Syrian Hōrān Plateau, ˙ showing that the features of negation with -š that other researchers claim do not exist in Palestinian varieties of Arabic do exist there, and that they are similar to analogous features of North African Arabic vernaculars. Chapter 6 follows the implications of this by querying where interrogation and negation with reflexes of šī may have arisen, proposing that its origins lie in the preIslamic varieties of the southern and western Arabian Peninsula, those labelled ‘Yemeni’ by early Arab grammarians and historians. It first shows that an indefinite qualifier analogous to those of Arabic exists in the Modern South Arabian language Mehri, a West Semitic language, where it also exhibits the quality of an existential particle, an analogue of which is found in four of the six Modern South Arabian languages. The Central Semitic languages, including Arabic, are said to have derived from West Semitic, and some trace of an existential particle, also built upon a reflex of šī, are occasionally attested in some geographically diverse varieties of Arabic, notably Omani, Yemeni, Syrian, Egyptian, and Moroccan. This permits the conclusion that these are ancient Western Semitic features, a shared innovation attested in the Modern South Arabian Languages and those Arabic varieties in which they now appear. From there, it reviews historical sources indicating that Arabic speakers from the southern Peninsula had enjoyed a significant historical presence in the lands of the Fertile Crescent and the Syrian steppes for at least several centuries before the arrival of Arabic-speaking Muslims in the region and perhaps since as early as the 9th century bc. This would mean that Arabic has been spoken in that area for up to 1,400 years before the advent of Islam in the 7th century ad, ample time for a southern Arabic feature to take root in the vernaculars of the region. This ultimately impinges upon questions of the original home of Arabic, if not that of all the Semitic languages. Two possibilities are considered: that they arose in the Levant with Arabic speakers migrating southward in early time, and that they arose in the southern Arabian Peninsula, with speakers migrating northward. Chapter 7 returns to the linguistic history of grammatical šī, arguing for an early Semitic derivation of the functional reflexes of šī. It draws correspondences between a proposed Proto-Semitic presentative/demonstrative/3rd person pronoun/existential

12

Introduction

particle—also built upon reflexes of /š/—basing the argument on attested correspondences between East Semitic Akkadian and surviving forms in West Semitic found in Modern South Arabian languages, especially Mehri and Arabic. This constitutes evidence for an ancient pedigree for the Arabic dialects interrogating with reflexes of šī. At the same time, it gives reason to suppose that the substantive šayʾ ‘thing’ arose from an indefinite determiner, not the other way round. Although this would appear to be an instance of ‘degrammaticalization’, that is, movement from a grammatical feature to a substantive lexical word—contrary to the unidirectional thesis of grammaticalization theory, which proposes the opposite trend, from content word to grammatical—it happens that one of the few genuine, uncontroversial cases of degrammaticalization is the movement from indefinite determiners to a word meaning ‘thing’. Furthermore, it is argued that demonstratives themselves must be language primitives, having always been grammatical in form and function, that they give rise to other grammatical features, and that grammaticalization theory must provide room to accommodate such possibilities. The argument closes by observing that the change from existential to negator does indeed display a cyclical pattern, but one identified by Croft, not Jespersen. Chapter 8 finally returns to a full-blown critique of theory, especially minimalist attempts to explain from a synchronic perspective Arabic negation with mā . . . š, arguing that without considering the diachronic sequence by which negation with -š came about, such explanations go astray. It questions too the predilection of formal approaches to Arabic for drawing much of their evidence from written Arabic, a language that no one speaks as a native tongue. A foundational principle of formal approaches to linguistics being to account for child acquisition of language, such an approach is untenable. That aside, even when formal accounts of spoken vernaculars are able to recognize the indefinite determiner, interrogative, and negating functions of -š, they are unable to explain them adequately.

1.4 A coming to terms Here it becomes necessary to examine the term ‘western’ itself. The idea that the preIslamic dialects of Arabic were divided along an east/west axis was proposed to modern Arabic studies in 1951 in Rabin’s seminal work Ancient West-Arabian, which went so far as to suggest that the eastern and western varieties of pre-Islamic Arabic were in fact two somewhat mutually unintelligible languages (1951: 2–3). That is not what is argued here. It happens that, whereas interrogation with a reflex of /š/ is widespread in Arabic, found in varieties of Arabic spoken from Uzbekistan in the east to Morocco in the west, the spoken vernaculars of Arabic negating with -š are largely situated in the southern Levant and the North African littoral (and, in Egypt, the upper Egyptian varieties too). It is in the sense that these dialects are all in the western Arabophone world that the term ‘western’ is usually meant to apply. In the Arabian

A coming to terms

13

Peninsula itself, spoken Yemeni varieties negate with -š, and they too happen to lie in the southern and western Peninsula. On the other hand, negation with -š is (or was) found in the Arabic of Oman, occupying the south and the east of the Peninsula. Those southern peninsular varieties probably descend from the varieties of preIslamic Arabic that the medieval grammarians of the language labelled ‘Yemeni’, by which they meant the Arabic spoken from the southern Hejaz, along the west coast of the Peninsula, and all through its south and south-eastern regions. In a broader, historical sense, then, the term ‘western’ can apply to those historical varieties, too, as well as to pre-Islamic varieties of Arabic spoken in at least the western regions of the Fertile Crescent, where some Syrian varieties of Arabic continue to negate with -š. In this work, no attempt is made to delineate an ancestral homeland for the many varieties of Arabic. But it is argued that all varieties retaining a grammatical šī are, in that feature at least, old. The question of the age of Arabic and its vernaculars in turn obliges a consideration of terms, especially when considering ancestral varieties, often referred to as ‘proto-’ forms of a language. It is taken as given that Arabic is a Semitic language; in that sense, an ancestor to all of the Semitic languages is assumed, usually called Proto-Semitic. A Proto-Semitic language or languages must themselves have descended from Afro-Asiatic ancestors, so named because of the similarities shared by languages spoken in the Horn of Africa, the Nile Valley, and the eastern Mediterranean with those of the Arabian Peninsula, the Fertile Crescent, and North Africa. In this sense we can speak of a pre-Proto-Semitic, and even pre-Afro-Asiatic, assuming that Afro-Asiatic languages are also descended from parent stocks. At some point, human languages emerged from non-language, and even in that sense a protolanguage can be envisioned. It is not unreasonable to suppose that some fundamental aspects of language—for example, signalling devices such as demonstratives and personal pronouns, which are often developmentally related, and which figure in our discussion of the origins of an interrogative and indefinite determiner šī—may have their origins in proto-languages of this pre-language type. It is in that sense, especially, that the concept of proto-language is purely abstract—some hypothetical original form or forms. The origins of human language are too old, and they have left too few clues, other than their relict ‘living fossils’ in modern languages and attested written forms of at best a few millennia in age, for more to be said about them. In that sense, too, hypothetical proto-languages of the fully human language type can be viewed as a combination of all features that can be collected from and shared commonly by a language family. No absolute time-frame can be imposed upon such concepts; similarly, the relation between hypothesized steps in the descent from Proto-Semitic to its daughter languages can only be construed relatively. In the end, however, proto-languages and proto-forms must represent varieties that actually were spoken or could be conceived of as having been spoken. Inherent in this is the property of variability; languages are not immutable, homogeneous entities,

14

Introduction

and the tendency to variability we witness today must have obtained even in the earliest human languages. This sense of the term should always be kept in mind, especially when we begin to consider proto-Arabic, a form intermediate between a West Semitic parent and its Central Semitic offspring (themselves hypothetical), of which all attested varieties of Arabic, ancient and modern, are siblings. Owens (2006: 2, 8) maintains that the object of any historical linguistics is to reconstruct a proto-language and to describe how daughter languages descended from a proto-language. Another way of viewing this is that historical linguistics attempts to describe how modern languages came to be as they are by attempting to look backwards to earlier states of the language, eventually (if entirely successful) providing a glimpse of what the proto-language ancestor (or ancestors) must have been like. Owens (2005) postulates a pre-diaspora Arabic, by which he means the Arabic of the Arabian Peninsula spoken around the time of the large outflow of Muslim Arabic speakers from the Peninsula into an expansive geographical range from the borders of China in the east to the Iberian Peninsula in the west. He conservatively dates the pre-diaspora between 630 and 790 ad, but he also supposes that, ‘a reconstructed pre-diasporic form could turn out to be a proto-Arabic form as well’ (2006: 4). For its part, proto-Arabic should be construed as being older by millennia than the mid7th century ad, constituting the form or forms of Arabic that began to differentiate themselves from a Central Semitic stock about or after the time that Central Semitic differentiated itself from West Semitic. Just as Owens judiciously advises that prediasporic Arabic was not necessarily a unitary variety, neither should proto-Arabic be conceived as having been a single variety. As Owens also observes, we are not at a point in our research to be able fully to differentiate pre-diasporic Arabic from proto-Arabic, although the immense time-frame alone should suggest that varieties of proto-Arabic did differentiate into daughter varieties of pre-diaspora Arabic. This work accounts for a series of those differentiations, tracing them as far back as it may be possible to go. As for those ‘varieties’, the term itself is loaded. In contemplating the variability within the Arabic of the modern era, the observer is confronted with a bewildering variety. When discussing regional variation in spoken Arabic, geopolitical terms such as ‘Yemeni,’ ‘Egyptian’, or ‘Moroccan’ are often employed, giving the impression of discrete entities, when dialect continua within and between geographical areas is more the reality, and the names of political entities wherein particular varieties along these continua lie are at best merely shorthand reference points; at worst, they become reified entities with some imagined reality of their own. What is more, even within such overarching geopolitical reference points, the number and variety of spoken forms of Arabic are legion. For example, within the small political entity that is Lebanon, local folklore identifies forty individual dialects. Yet when we speak of ‘Lebanese Arabic’ we are usually referring to one of the vernaculars of the capital city, Beirut, when the most casual observation will reveal that the major cities of Lebanon—Tripoli, Beirut, Saida (Sidon), and Sūr (Tyre)—each exhibits characteristic˙ ˙

A coming to terms

15

identifying features in the speech of its inhabitants. The Lebanese recognize these, to say nothing of the differences in the manner of speech within those metropolitan areas and the differences within and between the inland cities and villages in Mount Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley; noteworthy examples are the [q] characteristic of Druze speech, or, in negating itself, the discontinuousʾ a . . . š as opposed to the more familiar mā . . . š, exemplified in expressions like ʾ afīš ‘there isn’t’, or ʾ abiddīš ‘I don’t want’, of the countrified dialects of the Beirut hinterlands. In all these features and many more, the dialects of Lebanon are participants in a broader dialectal type known as ‘Levantine’, incorporating the Arabic varieties of what is sometimes called ‘Greater Syria’, that is, Syria proper, Jordan, Palestine, and Lebanon, but also encompassing Arabic varieties spoken in south-western Turkey. The variability within and between regions is so great that it is somewhat simplistic to speak of national varieties or even regional varieties. The so-called ‘Levantine’ dialects encompass many varieties that are more properly classified as Peninsular or Mesopotamian; the spoken vernaculars of the western regions of the modern state of Syria, for example, exhibit great affinity to the other varieties spoken in the Levant proper, while those in the northern—and especially north-eastern—areas share affinities with the Anatolian varieties, peripheral because they now sit across the international border between Syria and Turkey. For their parts, the eastern varieties of the Syrian steppes bear closer affiliation to the spoken vernaculars of Iraq than they do to those spoken in the Levant proper, certain emblematic features, such as the interrogative šlōn ‘how/what’, beginning in or near Damascus. Meanwhile, the spoken varieties of Jordan are of at least four types, probably many more, some of them decidedly not Levantine in character, and some of them for recent historical reasons displaying admixtures of varying origins. The varieties of Arabic spoken in Palestine proper—having been for more than sixty years of Israeli sovereignty somewhat isolated from those spoken in surrounding political entities, while at the same time coming into close contact with modern spoken varieties of Hebrew—have begun to acquire characteristics peculiar to themselves. Any restriction of movement between populations—whether posed by political borders or by physical barriers like rivers, deserts, and mountain ranges—can lead to dialect diversion. Anecdotal reports have remarked upon differences in the speech between relatives in villages divided for one or two generations by enforced barriers between populations in occupied Palestine. Describing more felicitous circumstances, Habib (2011) provides corroborating data from two neighbouring villages in Syria, founded by members of the same family, relational bonds being reinforced through intermarriage between the two villages, separated by a physical barrier no more imposing than a roadway, in which differences in pronunciation in certain vowels and consonants nevertheless mark the local origins of the inhabitants. This same kind of variability must have obtained in earlier eras. For example, what is often called ‘Egyptian’ Arabic is an overarching label that properly applies only to

16

Introduction

the Arabics spoken in Cairo and Alexandria and not to all Egyptian varieties (Wilmsen and Woidich 2007). Even there, Egyptians are aware of differences between the varieties now spoken in Cairo and in Alexandria, notable amongst these is the /n-/ of the 1st person indicative verb of Alexandria, characteristic of North African littoral dialects and documented for Arab Andalusia (Owens 2003). Earlier accounts of the dialects of Cairo show that the Arabic spoken in the city in the 19th century and earlier was much closer than it now is to the current dialects of the Levant (Blanc 1973; Vrolijk 1998; Woidich 1995; 1997). A catastrophic depletion of the population of Cairo in the 19th century and the city’s subsequent repopulation from the countryside (outlined in Woidich 1997) initiated broad changes to the Arabic spoken in the city, not simply from contact between the dialects from the countryside and those of the capital, with long-time city dwellers adopting what had formerly been rural dialect features, but also from the elites among the urban population abandoning features of their own dialect that had formerly been common to both the rural and the urban and (as it happens) also shared between regions of the Arabophone world. The emerging dialect came to display what are now seen as characteristic Egyptianisms distinguishing the vernacular(s) of Cairo from other regional varieties. The difference is between proximal and ultimate explanations. True, at a certain point in time—in the case of these recent developments, a known point—the dialects diverged and distinguishable features emerged. This is part of a proximal explanation. That some dialects may retain features that others have lost is immaterial to an ultimate explanation. Crucial to a historical accounting is that remnant forms persist in one dialect or another, in aggregate providing insight into an earlier state of the language. Treating the contemporary differences in dialects as arising from separate origins is to disregard essential historical depth, obliging researchers to account for such differences solely by examining current internal processes, assuming, sometimes even acknowledging, but generally ignoring even historically recent developments that the individual dialects may have experienced. Modern geopolitical identities aside, in surveying the nearly 1,300 years of writing about Arabic dialects, such as there is, the Arabic varieties called ‘Yemeni’ have experienced a particular reification of their own. Medieval Arab writers about Arabic tended to relegate to a category that they termed ‘Yemeni’ all varieties of Arabic spoken or originating in the southern Arabian Peninsula, encompassing an area extending from the southern central coast of the Hejaz in what is now Saudi Arabia into what is now Yemen proper, all the way to what is now Oman. The dialect variability within the modern nation-state of Yemen is sufficiently wide that we are safe in assuming a priori that a similar variability prevailed in medieval times, and that there never was a single Yemeni variety; instead, there were and are Yemeni varieties of Arabic. The same must be true of ‘western’ varieties of Arabic or protoArabic as well as the ‘eastern’.

A coming to terms

17

It must also be true that proto-languages themselves were variable within and amongst groups of their speakers, such that it becomes possible to envision variability in Proto-Semitic and continua between early proto-dialects of the Semitic languages (Zaborski 1991; 1995a; 1995b), ultimately leading to what are now generally conceived as separate languages. Indeed, the observable variability in the modern dialects of Arabic is so great that a dialectologist of modern Semitic languages has observed that they constitute a veritable laboratory for observing processes operating in the Semitic languages, such that any kind of change proposed as having taken place in the Semitic languages as a whole can be observed in some variety of Arabic (Jastrow 2002: 347). This, of course, favours a comparative study of Arabic varieties attempting a reconstruction of earlier states of the language, wherein traits found in widely dispersed varieties of the language, even if at a remove from each other in space or time, indicate shared retentions from an earlier ancestor or set of ancestors. At the same time, the dialectology of Arabic varieties being as complex as it is, it is best to think of the historical development of individual traits not of entire dialects, each variety exhibiting features peculiar to itself owing to a complex interplay of common inheritance, contact with other varieties, and local developments (Al-Jallad 2006). Sorting all of these out, while beyond the scope of this study, should remain the goal of a complete and mature Arabic dialectology.12 This brings us to the term ‘dialect’ itself. Generally a dialect is conceived as a nonstandard variant of a language. In itself, this should not pose any great difficulty, were it not for the hegemonic weight of the written Arabic language on the imaginations of its users. So highly revered is this variety of the language that its spoken dialects are often regarded as mere degraded forms of this exalted standard, not worthy of study or attention other than for the purposes of ameliorating the pernicious effects of their pervasive presence in Arab life. In that regard, the term ‘dialect’ has acquired something of a pejorative meaning, even while no given equivalent term for a dialect prevails across the many speech communities of the language in the Arab world, with some speakers referring to their natively acquired language asʿ āmmiyya, drawn from the root meaning ‘common’ with its connotations of vulgarity; darigˇa, implying both commonality and steps in a graded scale, the vernacular being implicitly lower down the scale; or haki, ‘a manner of speech’ or, ˙ from the same root, al-luġa al-mahkiyya ‘the spoken language’. The term luġa itself is ˙ problematic for its usual collocation with al-luġa al-ʿ arabiyya al-fushā ‘the most ˙˙ eloquent Arabic language’, referring to the language of the Arabic literary heritage, this sometimes being opposed to lahgˇa, in that respect indicating something associated with speech but not with language in this exalted sense. Even here, the two terms 12

The beginning of a synthesis has been accomplished with the recent compendia of Behnstedt and Woidich: their Arabische Dialektgeographie: Ein Einführung (2005) and their 3-vol. series Wortatlas der arabischen Dialekte (2010–13).

18

Introduction

are unsatisfactory for their confusion in usage dating from the earliest medieval scholarly treatments of Arabic, its practitioners struggling as we all do with coining or otherwise adopting suitable terms with which to describe their subject. Some modern analytical and pedagogical treatments of the language will use the term ‘colloquial’ Arabic, to distinguish the various regional spoken varieties from the written. Linguistic works often resort to the term ‘variety’ itself, as a neutral way of referring to any manner of Arabic usage, thereby levelling the distinctions between the ‘standard’ variety of writing and the many spoken varieties. Some linguistic works have begun to favour the term ‘vernacular’ Arabic in reference to spoken varieties of Arabic. In many respects this is the preferable term, for its technical meaning as ‘the variety of language learned in the domestic setting as one is growing up; the most typical variety one speaks when not monitoring speech and not otherwise attempting to adapt to others’ (Campbell and Mixco 2007: 218). This should after all be the type of language with which linguists concern themselves most. At the same time, the general meaning of the word also applies nicely, derived from the Latin root meaning ‘native’, indicating the use of a language or dialect indigenous to a region or country rather than a literary, cultured, or foreign language. So too do its other denotations having to do with non-standard varieties and relating to the normal spoken forms of a language. Its meanings can apply to written forms as well, all the way from vernacular influence on writing, as in, say, the representation of dialogue in novels and screenplays; to the use of colloquialisms in more formal writing; to the influence of vernacular norms on formal writing, in such things as word choice or sentence structure; to the full-blown accommodation of a vernacular language to formal settings, less seen in the Arab world than, say, in the adoption by the Roman Church of vernacular European languages in the celebration of the Mass, but, in the context of Arabic linguistics and dialectology, certainly to be seen in Malta, where a variety of vernacular Arabic has become the official language of the country, possessing a standard and dialects, and has been used as a literary language since at least the 15th century (Owens 2010), including translations of the Bible. Nevertheless, the term ‘dialect’ also applies to writing in its broadest meaning of a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties, all of which constitute a language—as in the literary dialects of ancient Greek, such as certain types of poetry in the Doric dialect, philosophy and drama in Attic, or historical prose in Ionic. Arabic writing, even or perhaps especially that of the modern day, exhibits regionalisms in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation; more subtly, it can reflect influences of the vernacular substrate over which it is superposed (Wilmsen 2010a and references). In that regard, a more explicitly linguistic definition also holds, as ‘any regional or social variety of a single language that is mutually intelligible with other dialects of the same language and that differs in some definable features from other varieties of that language’ (Campbell and Mixco 2007: 42). Such a broad definition can accommodate the spoken vernaculars

A repayment of debts

19

of Arabic and the regional varieties of the Arabic of writing, which do exist and are certainly mutually intelligible, even while they can be shown to differ in definable features. Finally, in historical context, the term can be applied to different varieties of a language or a proto-language before they became identifiable languages in their own rights. Researchers do indeed speak of the dialects of Semitic (Weninger et al. 2011), and the concept is worth preserving, as it is likely that proto-languages exhibited variability amongst their dialects as well (Zaborski 1991). At one point in time, the separate languages within the Semitic family were probably more closely related to each other such that they must have originated as dialects. No happy solution to this terminological conundrum has won consensus, any more than has an acceptable equivalent for the native conception of al-luġa al-ʿ arabiyya al-fushā, or simply al-fushā.13 Accordingly, with the exception of the word ‘colloquial’, ˙˙ ˙˙ I shall be using all these terms with reference to natively spoken varieties of Arabic, generally relegating the term ‘dialect’ to discussions of and references to broad regions wherein certain clusters of related traits justify reference to dialect areas and local varieties within those areas, to historical varieties known or thought to have prevailed in certain geographical regions, or to posited sub-varieties of early Semitic languages or Arabic itself. It is hoped that readers will usually be able to decipher the implications of these terms from context, and their indulgence and forgiveness for the inevitable overlap in the meaning of terms is apologetically solicited.

1.5 A repayment of debts As a final word before we begin, I am obliged by pleasant duty to express my thanks to several colleagues who have contributed their insights and encouragement during various stages of this work, lending their expertise where mine had been lacking. First and foremost is Manfred Woidich, late of the University of Amsterdam, who early provided me with his perspectives on negation in Arabic, much of it arising out of his researching, teaching, and thinking about Arabic negation for decades, beginning with his seminal dissertation on the subject in Egyptian Arabic, and who steered me towards relevant writings on the subject, many quite rightly being of his own authorship. I much appreciate Janet Watson of the University of Leeds for her sporadic replies to some of my queries about Yemeni Arabic and the Modern South Arabian language Mehri while she was conducting fieldwork in Oman, taking the time to answer her mail whenever she was able to access it; I have not attended any of her Mehri workshops, but I hope to be able to do henceforward. Adam Ussishkin, of the University of Arizona, lent me his knowledge and experience with Maltese language, linguistics, and linguists at a critical point in my own struggle 13 See Owens’ (2005: 272–5) discussion of the term ‘dialect’, where he outlines four separate meanings as they apply to Arabic.

20

Introduction

to understand some of the trends in the language. For insights into the closely related Tunisian Arabic, I am especially appreciative and enormously grateful to Karen McNeil, an Arabic-English reviewer on a new bilingual dictionary from Oxford University Press, for the work she and her husband, Miled Faiza of Brown University, have put into what she calls a ‘strange hobby’, constructing a searchable corpus of written representations of spoken Tunisian Arabic, drawn mostly from dramatic scripts and screenplays and web fora in which Tunisian commentators dominate; utilizing both the corpus itself and engaging in an ongoing correspondence with her has helped to clarify my thinking about the place of Tunisian Arabic in the operation of /š/ as a grammatical marker in the history of the Arabic dialects. I owe an enormous debt to Na’ama Pat-El of the University of Texas at Austin, while she too was in the middle of research leave, for sharing with me some of her most recent thoughts about the development of the Arabic dialects, and especially for reading the chapter on comparative Semitics and correcting some of my grosser errors in reasoning and reconstruction. To Professor Federico Corriente of Zaragoza University, whose work has always informed my own, and whom I often cite, I owe both a debt of gratitude and an apology. My gratitude is for his prodigious work in the field of Andalusi Arabic studies, practically inventing it single-handedly as a discipline; for his equally influential work in Arabic linguistics and dialectology as a whole; and for his corresponding with me about a particular point of interpretation of negation and interrogation in Andalusi Arabic. My apology to him is for continuing to disagree with him on that particular point alone. So, too, do I greatly appreciate Ernest McCarus, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, a friend and a mentor, for the long hours he spent sitting with me as the work of constructing the arguments in this book was drawing to a close, questioning closely all its aspects and implications, and, not for the first time, pronouncing himself pleased with my work. I am likewise indebted to Najma Al Zidjaly of the Department of English Language and Literature at Sultan Qaboos University for her words of encouragement throughout the work of producing the book, while she too was on research leave in the department of linguistics at Georgetown University; for providing me her insights into the functioning of aspects of grammatical šī in the spoken Arabic of Muscat; and for coaching me through the process of approaching the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center for support in a new phase of my work in Arabic dialectology. Finally I must acknowledge my debt to the reviewers of this work in manuscript; in the true spirit of the tradition of peer review, their comments have made this a much better work. Altogether, the work has benefited immensely from the insights that all of these friends and colleagues have offered as well as from a reliance upon their work and that of innumerable others labouring in the field of Arabic dialectology. In repaying my debt to them, I in no way lade any of them with the responsibility for the conclusions I have reached or for any frailties in argument or analysis; any lapses in judgement or interpretation are very much my own.

2 On the age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars An unresolved question As any other field of human inquiry, the study of Arabic is burdened with its own unexamined assumptions, at times hindering analysis and delimiting the conclusions that may be drawn about the current state of the language and its history. Foremost among these is the notion that the spoken dialects of Arabic across the entire span of the Arabophone world arose relatively late in the history of the language. Not everyone working in Arabic studies broadly defined subscribes to such a view, but it is nevertheless pervasive enough to hold the status of a defining paradigm in the field. The traditional opinion widely held amongst speakers of the language is that the Arabic of writing, with its desinential case and mood markings, is close to the original form of the language spoken in pre-Islamic Arabia and, with the advent of Islam, the variety carried by its speakers into lands outside of the Arabian Peninsula, where they had not previously lived in large numbers. According to this scenario, the contact between these native speakers of this older form of Arabic and their non-native subjects inevitably led to deleterious changes in the language, as those non-native populations acquired the language incompletely, resulting in the modern spoken vernaculars of Arabic. Some observers of the language from within the Western linguistic tradition have adopted this view uncritically. Others have advanced a more nuanced narrative, depicting the Arab armies, advancing with the progress of Islam and originating from differing tribal areas within the Arabian Peninsula, as bringing their individual tribal dialects of this older variety of Arabic with them on the campaigns of conquest. On this account, contact between speakers of these various dialects in the military cantonments in the conquered territories led to a profound dialect levelling, resulting especially in, but not being limited to, the loss of the desinential case and mood endings; this led to the emergence of a common variety (often called a koiné), from which the various local dialects descended. Left

22

Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

undetermined in the second view are questions of origins and age of the dialects contributing to this common variety and the nature of their contributions to the modern dialects.

2.1 Old and New Arabic These two perspectives, summarized in Miller (1986) and again in Behnstedt and Woidich (2005), the latter subjecting them to critical scrutiny, may safely be regarded as representing mainstream thinking about the history of Arabic.1 Both views hold in common the positing of a parent variety—sometimes called ‘Old Arabic’—similar to the language preserved in the canons of Arabic writing, represented especially in records of pre-Islamic poetry, the Qur’ān, prophetic literature, and narrative accounts of the feats of pre-Islamic Arabian heroes. About such a perspective, we may feel, along with Hopkins, ‘entitled to entertain certain misgivings regarding their value as fully reliable witnesses to the Arabic language as it was written and spoken immediately before and after the appearance of Islam’ (1984: xxxvii–viii). Noting that the earliest manuscripts of these works are contemporaneous with the works of the early Arabic language philologists of the 8th century ad engaged in the work of codifying the variety of language that came to be canonical written Arabic, Hopkins further remarks: ‘the present form of the texts of the Jāhili diwans, the Qur’ān, the Prophetical literature etc. is a faithful representation of pre-normative Arabic has very frequently been assumed; it has, however, never been demonstrated’ (p. xxxvii). Opposed to this Old Arabic variety are the presumed daughter dialects— sometimes called ‘Neo-Arabic’—in some aspects widely divergent from each other and from their supposed parent. The implications of such terminology are clear: those using it see a historical progression analogous to that of English, beginning with an archaic Old Arabic, through a postulated transitional variety, usually conceived as ‘Middle Arabic’, and ending in the many varieties of modern Neo-Arabic. Logically, this designation should include modern writings in what is termed ‘Modern Standard Arabic’, for modern writing, too, has developed away from the strictures of classical writing. Esseesy (2010) documents structural and stylistic changes to occur in written Arabic over a millennium and longer. Rather, what is meant by ‘Neo-Arabic’ are the modern spoken vernaculars of Arabic and not any written form. Whereas the implicit assumption often is that Middle Arabic was indeed a stage in the development between Old Arabic and Neo-Arabic, this was posed explicitly by Joshua Blau, a name now inextricably linked to Middle Arabic studies since his seminal 1965 work on Judeo-Arabic: ‘M[iddle] A[rabic] constitutes the missing link between C[lassical] A[rabic] and modem dialects’ (1966: I.26; 2002: 9). This position

1

Owens (2005: 299) views both approaches as variants of a single theme.

Old and New Arabic

23

can no longer be maintained, and even Blau in later writings (2002: 18) has begun to retreat from it. The reason for this is that medieval Middle Arabic texts share many features with texts written in the modern period (Khan 2011). Writing about Middle Arabic about a decade and a half ago, Versteegh had already recognized this: ‘it would be a mistake to assign any chronological connotation to the term “Middle Arabic” . . . contemporary texts . . . turn out to be very much like those [of] Middle Arabic texts from the “Classical period” ’ (Versteegh 1997: 114). More recently, den Heijer (2012), in the introduction to a compilation of conference papers addressing mostly medieval Middle Arabic texts, is able to write, ‘In general, specialists in the field no longer seem to adhere to the old habit of using the term “Middle Arabic” as an exclusively chronological device for describing a postulated intermediate phase between Old Arabic (often incorrectly identified with Classical Arabic) and the modern Arabic dialects’ (den Heijer 2012: 6). More a textual phenomenon than a true chronological stage, Middle Arabic constitutes writings in Arabic from the medieval era, largely undertaken by writers from minority Arabophone populations composing works for the consumption of their own communities living in the Arab Muslim world; these writers were not as firmly committed to the unforgiving rules of classical Arabic as to expurgate all colloquialisms from their work. They were certainly not all Jews; Blau himself, one year after publishing his work on Judeo-Arabic, released a compendious threevolume work of Christian writers (1966), in which he documents their many departures from a punctilious adherence to the received grammar. Even some early Muslim authors, writing at a time before the codified rules of Arabic composition took complete effect, between the 8th and 9th centuries ad, sometimes strayed into what later came to be considered stigmatized vernacular features in writing (Hopkins 1984). For that reason, some researchers are coming to prefer the term ‘Mixed Arabic’ in reference to such texts. From that perspective, Middle Arabic is mixed Arabic, and does not represent a historical stage in the development of the dialects. Neither term is completely satisfactory: as both are misleading and have, as a result, outlived their usefulness; ‘Middle Arabic’ because it denotes the middle of nothing, ‘Mixed Arabic’ because it implicitly sets as a norm for writing—and for speech too—texts that adhere to the rigid rules of Arabic writing established by grammarians of Arabic (a great many of them not native speakers of the language) in the 2nd/8th–3rd/9th centuries; into these are ‘mixed’ non-canonical elements of other varieties of Arabic, probably equally old but lacking a well-developed literary heritage and the sanction of published grammars. Such so-called ‘Middle Arabic’ texts are important not because they mark a developmental stage between ancient Arabic and the modern spoken Arabic dialects but for what they tell us about the nature of the medieval dialects of Arabic. They are valuable precisely because they give evidence of the remarkable continuity and

24

Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

stability of the spoken dialects of Arabic over a period of 1,000 years, supplying for reconstructions built upon observations of modern dialects a base from which to draw comparisons. In a recent work demonstrating a significant Arabic presence in the Fertile Crescent well before the 7th century ad (1st century ah),2 when Arabicspeaking Muslims arrived to establish the foundations of a world civilization, AlJallad (2012: 32) supposes that the view equating the older Peninsular varieties of Arabic with the language described by the medieval grammarians and, by implication, the modern vernaculars descended from it or something like it, is now in the minority amongst modern scholars of the language. Whether he is correct in his supposition or not, the terms ‘Old Arabic’ and ‘Neo-Arabic’ continue in use as conceptual categories, in some (perhaps considerable) degree setting the parameters of discussion and theory about what Arabic is. Yet, because of the emerging perspective on the so-called ‘Middle Arabic’, the term ‘Neo-Arabic’ itself begins to lose its applicability. In what sense are the modern Arabic dialects new? Based on manuscript evidence alone, they are every bit as old as the variety (or varieties) labelled ‘Old Arabic’. In codifying the rules of what was to become the classical Arabic language of writing, the early Arab grammarians took note of dialectal differences in the language, but, as they were interested in describing and codifying a grammar of the Arabic of poetry and especially of the Qur’ān, itself consisting in numerous ‘dialectal’ recensions, theirs was not a systematic treatment of the dialects of Arabic present in and around the Arabian Peninsula of their day. Rabin remarks: ‘we have a great deal of information on minor points of dialect usage, but get only occasional glimpses of the basic forms’ (1951: 13). Regardless, this means that the earliest written documents of Arabic from the Islamic era, which began to appear before the end of the 2nd century ah (around the end of the 8th century ad) attest to the existence of dialects. For its part, the earliest documentary evidence of the postIslamic, or so-called ‘Neo-Arabic’, dialects to surface in ‘Mixed Arabic’ texts dates to before the year 300 ah—around the beginning of the 10th century ad (Hopkins 1984).

2.2 New Arabic is old At its widest, the hiatus between the ‘Old Arabic’ dialects and the ‘Neo-’ is narrower than a century and a half. This is certainly long enough for some changes to appear in the language, but it is not clear that the wide diversity in the many extant varieties of Arabic had its beginnings in that period, in which Arabic-speaking Muslims spread across the wide expanse that was to become the Arabophone world. It is thus becoming possible to envision multiple lines of development for all varieties of Arabic. With their origins probably in the pre-Islamic dialects of the Arabian

2

We shall return to this thesis in Chapter 6.

New Arabic is old

25

Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent (Al-Jallad 2012; Magidow 2013), the so-called NeoArabic dialects are every bit as old as the ‘Old Arabic’ of earlier paradigms. As these kinds of realizations have come over researchers, a third view, coalescing around the edges of mainstream theory but retaining its terminology (promoted e.g. in Fischer 1995), becomes possible. It holds that the differences between the modern Arabic of writing and the modern Arabized dialects—that is, those situated outside of the Arabian Peninsula—point to a common ancestor for all of these varieties, the daughters of which nevertheless diverged well before any speakers of Arabic strayed too far outside their original range. Rejecting the Old/New dichotomy, Owens (2006) has established a stoutly fortified redoubt on this front. In it, he demonstrates that neither the assumptions about the relative lateness of the Arabic dialects nor indeed the labels Old Arabic and Neo-Arabic is founded in any historical linguistic reality based in a principled comparative method. Applying that method, he finds that most of the iconic features marking the differences between the two are demonstrably old features likely to have been inherited from the proto-language. Owens first remarks that what is called Old Arabic was itself diverse, and that many of the features that are regarded as characteristic of the modern dialects are actually attested for Old Arabic as well (here notably in the realization of vowels: 2006: 67–9). For example, he observes that with respect to vowel reduction in verbal paradigms, supposedly characteristic of modern dialects, ‘some modern dialects continue the given pre-diasporic Arabic paradigm [i.e. that which prevailed before Muslim Arabic speakers left the Arabian Peninsula in large numbers], while others have innovated’ (2006: 69). The crucial point is that in these particulars, if some modern dialects have not innovated but retain older forms, ‘there is no linguistic basis here for differentiating ‘Old’ from ‘Neo-’ Arabic’ (2006: 69). By itself, such an observation gives reason for rethinking the historical relationship between the Arabic of writing and the Arabic of speech. But there is more: from a list of about twenty features adduced by Fischer and Jastrow (1980) said to characterize newer Arabic varieties, Owens identifies only two differences between the older variety of Arabic and its supposed modern offspring (2006: 71–2). Focusing specifically on the dual, which written Arabic manifests in verbs, pronouns, demonstratives, and relative pronouns, while almost all Arabic dialects observe it primarily in nouns, he notes that Fischer and Jastrow themselves regard written Arabic as unique among Semitic languages for its embodying such a fully developed dual system: They explicitly argue that [the reduced form of the dual in modern dialects] is not a simplification in the modern dialects but (it appears) a retention of the original proto-Semitic situation . . . This point is an important one for . . . it shows that even if consistent differences between Old Arabic . . . and the dialects are discernible . . . it does not automatically follow that the reflexes borne by the modern dialects are necessarily innovations. The modern dialect dual

26

Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

could in fact be ‘older’ in comparative linguistic terms than is the dual in Old Arabic, whose spread to the verbal and other categories is to be seen as innovative. (Owens 2006: 72)

This leads Owens to conclude: ‘if the modern dialects continue old forms . . . there is no basis for introducing them [the forms] into a discussion with purports to differentiate Old from Neo-Arabic. Lacking further comparative analysis, they simply can be said to characterize both’ (p. 70). The two categories ‘Old Arabic’ and ‘Neo-Arabic’ are thus ‘inherited baggage from the nineteenth century’ which should not ‘be recognized as independent entities in contemporary Arabic linguistics’ (p. 74). In a review of Owens’ work, which he identifies as ‘a landmark in Arabic studies, one of the most important contributions to the subject in decades’, Retsö (2008: 121) justifies this third view: ‘Arabic’ is a label attached to an immense linguistic complex, beginning with the Namaara inscription of A.D. 328 and continuing through the Qur’ān and the corpus of poetry from Arabia ascribed to poets from about A.D. 500 onwards to include an enormous amount of medieval literature, belonging to the Islamic, Christian, and Jewish communities, some of which shows considerable linguistic variation of the kind usually called Middle Arabic. Further, ‘Arabic’ encompasses the modern standard language of the Arab countries and the modern vernaculars from Mauritania to Oman and from Anatolia to Lake Chad. Various attempts have been made to explain the origins of this bewildering complex, some of which go back to the medieval Arab linguists . . . It has often been assumed that the input was a language that was more or less identical with what is called Classical Arabic, by which is usually meant the language of the Qur’ān and the oldest poetry and the standardized language of medieval literature. It has, however, long been obvious that matters are more complicated. The ‘Classical’ corpus shows more variation than was originally admitted and the definition of what would constitute Classical Arabic in purely linguistic terms based on this corpus has turned out to be notoriously difficult to formulate. (Retsö 2008: 117)

The very thought of variability in classical Arabic is anathema to those holding conventional perceptions of the language, which may be summed up in the adage often intoned by native speakers of the language that classical Arabic—according to such conceptions still alive today—is ‘the same from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans’; in this scenario, such immutability spans the ages as well as the continents. In the view of traditionalists of all stripes, language professionals as well as laymen, the modern Arabic dialects are unworthy of serious attention, being corruptions of the pure ideal of the true language now known and used mostly in writing, and falling under the appellation accorded it by native users as al-luġa al-ʿarabiyya al-fus·h·ā ‘the most eloquent Arabic language’—henceforth FA (fus·h·ā Arabic). It is evident in the very name that this is a native user’s social assessment of the language, founded on tenets other than a complete assessment of the facts of the language. Noteworthy in themselves, social assessments of language can only present partial views of language development. A dispassionate assessment of the historical development of Arabic cannot afford to ignore the linguistic data available in all of its varieties, including the

New Arabic is old

27

dialects. Instead, it must, along with Owens, place on a par ‘all linguistic material, whether that which became canonized in the classical language or that which may popularly be understood as dialectal’ (2003: 274; 2006: 12). From such a perspective, FA is, as Owens also states, ‘included in the consideration of any reconstruction, but cannot automatically be assumed to have a privileged position relative to other varieties, even contemporary ones’ (2003: 299). The privileging of that variety of Arabic to the neglect of others has undoubtedly hindered the reconstruction of historical stages in the development of the language. As Owens also remarks (2005: 273; 2006: 137), to ignore information retained in varieties of Arabic other than FA, among them the spoken dialects, is to write half a history of the Arabic language (indeed, less than half). Indeed, it risks fostering a distorted conclusion about earlier states of the language (Owens 2006: 114). This view is shared by some other researchers, who provide good reason for believing not only that the regional varieties of Arabic retain features as old as the oldest attested varieties of FA but also that, far from being descendants of a variety of FA, some, perhaps many, of the dialects did not descend directly from old FA at all; it and the modern spoken dialects of Arabic are sister varieties, descending from a common Proto-Arabic ancestor or ancestors. An indication of this is that the modern spoken vernaculars retain archaisms analogous to those found in other related Semitic and Afroasiatic languages, not all of which are shared by attested varieties of FA. Thus Retsö (2005; 2009; see also Behnstedt and Woidich 2005: 50–1), adducing evidence for an ancient plural marker /m/ in the verb in several Arabic dialects— which survives, for example, in the Cairene Arabic gum ‘they came’ (as opposed to gˇāʾū or igˇū ‘they came’ of other varieties) and in other, especially Bedouin varieties, a reflex shared by several Semitic and Afroasiatic languages, but of which there nevertheless exist no traces in canonical written Arabic—contends: The common explanation of the differences between . . . the Arabiyya [i.e. FA or its parent] and the dialects by the assumption of a straight development from the former to the latter . . . is, at a closer look, not very likely and even less so when comparative Semitic evidence is taken into consideration . . . There is no reason to assume that the modern Arabic dialects are developments from a more or less unitary base, more or less identical with the Arabiyya . . . As far back as historical evidence goes it appears that . . . there has never been any linguistic unity in Arabia. This should be the starting point for every diachronic analysis of the languages that have emerged from there. (Retsö 2005: 38)

Meanwhile, Zaborski (1995a: 293), observing that ‘modern Arabic dialects contain some archaisms going back to Proto-Semitic which do not occur in one Arabic dialect, namely in Classical Arabic’, reconstructs the proto-form of the independent 1st person singular pronoun as *anī and not the anā of Arabic writing, basing his analysis upon its presence in several dialects of Arabic and in other Semitic and Afroasiatic languages. He further postulates both *nah·na and nah·nu as proto-forms

28

Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

of the 1st person plural, remarking: ‘actually among Arabic dialects Classical Arabic is exceptional in having -u’ (1995a: 292).3

2.3 Retentions and innovations Comparative evidence from modern Arabic vernaculars and the earliest Arabic writings justifies adopting a more nuanced view of the origins of the modern Arabic dialects. Behnstedt and Woidich conclude: Based on modern findings, our knowledge of old and classical Arabic, in comparison with early Neo-Arabic forms from texts of the 9th Century, we can assume the existence of two different types of spoken Arabic at the beginning of the Arab-Islamic expansion . . . Exactly when the separation of the two types had occurred, i.e., how far back before this expansion, can not be established . . . The probability of a widespread polygenesis as the origin of the current situation, i.e., the modern dialects, must be reckoned with. (Behnstedt and Woidich 2005: 26)

The types of feature adduced by researchers adopting such a view, shared retentions, are in general useful in establishing ancestry. They are not, however, good diagnostics for establishing subgroupings within language families, or (with Arabic) within languages themselves, because languages or varieties of an individual language need not share an intermediate ancestor in order for some of them to retain older features. In explicating this principle, for example, Huehnergard and Rubin (2011) observe that the East Semitic language Akkadian and the West Semitic languages Hebrew and Arabic all retain a derived passive verbal form with prefixed n (Ar. infaʿala ‘it was done’), whereas other West Semitic languages do not; but, they maintain, we would not as a consequence ‘group together Akkadian, Hebrew, and Arabic, since the N-Stem is undoubtedly a Proto-Semitic feature that has been lost or marginalized independently in the other languages. Nor would we group together those languages that have lost this form’ (2011: 265–6)—a shared loss itself, similarly, not usually being a sufficient diagnostic for establishing subgroupings. For that, shared innovations must be demonstrated. This has become an acknowledged principle since Hetzron proposed it (1976): morphological innovations are more reliable in establishing subgroupings, as morphological systems are resistant to borrowing which, while not impossible ‘happens in very special circumstances only, and rarely enough so that it would not practically weaken the strength of shared morpholexical innovations as criteria for subgrouping’ (Hetzron 1976: 101).4 3 But compare Moscati et al. (1964: 105), who reconstruct nah·nu or nih·nu as the Proto-Semitic form, and Lipiński (2001: 311), who proposes that nu is the sole common element with Afroasiatic. 4 Magidow, observing the enormous variability in Arabic demonstratives and what appears to be their ‘wholesale borrowing’ between dialects (2013: 82, n. 32), ‘suggests caution when adopting Hetzron’s principle’, noting that ‘between closely related languages diffusion and borrowing are almost identical, even for morpholexical forms’ (pp. 429–30).

Shared Semitic retentions

29

The same principle should apply in establishing subgroupings within languages as they are in establishing them between. As such, they should be helpful in determining the branches in the Arabic family tree—notably, for our purposes, the relationship between Arabic varieties that negate with -š and those negating without. Nevertheless, in assessing features of the spoken varieties of Arabic, both principles must be observed; shared retentions will establish their relative age and shared innovations their generic affiliations. In a discussion of a widespread dialectal phenomenon of North African Arabic (including Andalusi), the marking of 1st person indicative verbs with n- for the singular and n . . . u for the plural, Owens (2003) hints at both: ‘In general the problem of Arabic reconstruction must always confront the question of whether dialect forms of the diaspora are due to postdiaspora innovation, or are reflective of pre-existing diversity in the Arabian Peninsula’ (p. 715). Implicit in this is that not all the manners in which the modern spoken vernaculars of Arabic diverge from FA, often sharing their features widely amongst themselves, are shared post-diasporic innovations; some of them can instead indicate pre-existing diversity in the pre-diasporic Arabian Peninsula. Not all do, however, and Owens effectively demonstrates that the innovative 1st person n- is postdiasporic. Providing an indication of relative age would be features not found in FA but shared between Arabic dialects and other Semitic languages. These would be shared retentions lost to FA, not necessarily indicating different subgroupings within Arabic but certainly attesting to the relative age of the dialects in which they appear. That is, if the parent of FA lost them, it lost them after a time in which it and its sister dialects would once have shared them; as a consequence, the dialects retaining them are at least as old as FA. The plural -m suffix of Retsö and Behnstedt and Woidich and the non-canonical personal pronouns of Zaborski are of this order of evidence. Absent from FA but present in some of the dialects and in sister Semitic languages, they serve to indicate that some features of spoken vernaculars are ancient. Shared innovations amongst Arabic dialects and between them and other Semitic languages become important to our investigation of the various grammatical functions of reflexes of šī. For now, however, it is essential to establish that the precursors to some of the modern spoken vernaculars of Arabic, at least in some of their features, are as old as FA.

2.4 Shared Semitic retentions Modern spoken varieties of Arabic often share productive retentions of older features that have become isolated relics in FA. Consider an intriguing semantic construction, regarded as an innovative curiosity in those dialects in which it appears: what is called ‘interpretive annexation’ (al-id·āfa al-tafsīriyya) or ‘explicative annexation’ (al-id·āfa

30

Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

al-bayāniyya). Rather like the better-known and generally more productive ‘improper annexation’ of the false id·āfa (al-id·āfa ġayr al-h·aqīqiyya), it juxtaposes nouns and adjectives in positions contrary to their usual. In the false id·āfa, the construction looks like the noun construct state, in which the first item cannot host the definite article, whereas the second may do so, except that in the false id·āfa, the adjective takes the usual place of the noun of possession:5 (2.1) h·asanu al-wagˇhi good the-face ‘fair of face’ In explicative or interpretive annexation, the opposite sequence obtains: the noun is in its usual place, without the definite article, followed by an adjective that does host it. Encountered only rarely in modern writing, mostly in frozen expressions surviving from an earlier period, such as rabīʿu l-ʾawwali ‘the first [month] of spring’ (the third month of the Islamic calendar) or dāru l-ʾāxirati ‘the final home’ (i.e. ‘the Hereafter’, e.g. Qur’ān 12:109; see Wright 1981: II.232–4 for a lengthy discussion, a proposed explanation, and other examples). Found in many dialects of Arabic, this often identifies common concepts and place names, often in fixed expressions (Blanc 1964: 126–8), from context those being understood as recent conceptual additions to the language, indicating that the formula, until recently at least, remained productive: (2.2) a. t· arīʾ iž-ždīd@ route the-new ‘The New Road’ (a neighbourhood in Beirut) b. ramlat il-bēd·a sand the-white ‘The white sands’ (a beach in Beirut) c. sint iž-žāy@ year the-coming ‘The coming year’ (Lebanon) d. bayt il-ʿatīq house the-old ‘The old house’ (a village in Syria) Medieval grammarian al-Taʿālibī (d. 430/1038) discusses this feature under the rubric ‘The annexation of a thing to its descriptor’ (id·āfat al-šayʾ ilā ·sifatih) calling it Unusually for the construct state, the first item of the false id·āfa may host the article if the entire phrase is definite: rajulun h·asanu l-wagˇhi ‘a man fair of face’ as opposed to al-rajulu l- h·asanu l-wagˇhi ‘the man fair of face’. 5

Shared Semitic retentions

31

‘a practice of the Arabs’ (sunan al-ʿarab) (2010: 379). As is usually the case when medieval grammarians are discussing irregularities of the language, it is not clear whether by the appellation ‘Arab’ he is referencing vernacular speech, i.e. regional spoken dialects, or whether he means the formal language of declamation, what Zwettler (1978: 133, 135, 172) calls ‘elocutionary utterances’ couched in the formulaic medium of oral poetry, one of the sources of what was to become FA. Nevertheless, that this ‘improper’ construction is shared by Northwest Semitic languages Aramaic, Hebrew, and Phoenician indicates that, far from being a recent innovation, it is a feature of Central Semitic, among the languages with which Arabic is classed, and from which descended the Northwest Semitic languages (Rubin 2008b). A few examples should suffice (from Pat-El 2012a): (2.3) Classical Hebrew rūah· hā-rāʿā breath.fs def-bad.fs ‘the evil spirit’ (1 Sam. 16:23) (2.4) Syriac hānnōn tlātā gabr-īn zaddīk-ē dem.mp three man-mp.indef righteous-mp.def ‘these three righteous men’ (Aph. Fide 29: 19–20) (2.5) Phoenician ʾln-m h-qdš-m ʾl god.m-p def-holy-mp dem.mp ‘these holy gods’ (KAI 14:22) A more vitally productive ancient feature of Arabic morphology surviving and thriving in spoken vernaculars across a broad swath of the Arabophone world, once present in the oldest recorded varieties of FA but now largely absent from modern writing, are the noticeable deviations from the near categorical agreement patterns of modern FA. Specifically, feminine singular agreement (or ‘deflected agreement’ or ‘impoverished agreement’), which appears almost invariably with non-human plural nouns in post-Islamic and modern written Arabic, is sometimes used with human plural entities in older Arabic writing: (2.6) qālat la-hum rusulu-hum said-she to-them prophets-their ‘Said their prophets to them’ (Qur’ān 14:10) ‫َﻗﺎ َﻟ ْﺖ َﻟ ُﻬ ْﻢ ُﺭ ُﺳ ُﻠ ُﻬ ْﻢ ﺇِﻥ ٰﻧ ْﺤ ُﻦ ﺇِ ٰﻻ َﺑ ٌَﴩ ﻣ ْﺜ ُﻠ ُﻜ ْﻢ‬ Here, the verb qāl ‘to say’ preceding the plural subject al-rusul ‘prophets’ exhibits deflected agreement, appearing as the feminine singular perfect form qālat. This type

32

Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

of deflected agreement occurs thrice in this section of the sūra, a discussion of all prophets that came before Muh·ammad, once in the same construction with qālat in the following āya (Qur’ān 14:11) and once with gˇāʾa ‘to come’ in that immediately preceding it (Qur’ān 14:9: gˇāʾat-hum rusulu-hum ‘came (3 f.sg.) their prophets to them’), nor are these the only occurrences of feminine agreement with plural human entities in the Qur’ān. In writing, an Arabic verb preceding its subject does not usually agree in number with the following subject (i.e. its agreement is deflected or impoverished); but the usual default is toward the masculine singular (unless the plural refers to female humans, in which case the verb is optionally in the feminine singular, especially if nothing intervenes between the verb and its subject, e.g. gˇāʾat al-banāt ‘came (fs) the girls’ but gˇāʾa amsi l-banāt ‘came (ms) yesterday the girls’). Casting the verb into the feminine singular with a masculine plural is remarkable in written Arabic. Even if it occasionally appears in this fashion in older FA, this sort of concord in modern writing employing strict FA is rare. Regardless, Arabic speakers of many modern dialects regularly employ deflected agreement with human plurals: (2.7) in-nās bit-kazzib ʿalā-h·āl-hā the-people she-lies on-condition-hers ‘People lie to themselves’ (Damascus) (2.8) fī nās ʿarf-a r-rugūla kwayyis there are people knows-she the-manliness well ‘Some people really know how to behave like men’ (Cairo) In (2.7), the verb tkazzib ‘she lies’ and the possessive pronoun -hā ‘her’ in hāl-hā (lit. ‘her condition’ but here idiomatically ‘herself ’) are feminine singular, as is the participle ʿarfa ‘knowing’ in (2.8). In these dialects, strict (i.e. plural) agreement, whereby tokens agree in number with their head nouns, may also be used with human plurals, as in the following example in which the speaker employs a plural demonstrative dōl ‘those’ and 3rd person plural verb form kānū ‘they were’: (2.9) dōl kan-u kuttāb-il-masrah· fi-l-xamsīneyyāt wa-s-sittīnāt those were-they writers-the-theatre in-the-fifties and-the-sixties ‘Those were the playwrights of the nineteen fifties and sixties’ (Cairo) Contrariwise, in older FA, strict agreement may be used with non-human plural head nouns: (2.10) wa-dkur-ū -llāha fī ayyāmin maʿdūdātin and-mention-you Allah in days numbered.pl ‘and think on Allah for a certain number of days’ (Qur’ān 2:203) ‫َﻭﺍ ْﺫ ُﻛ ُﺮﻭﺍْ ﺍﻟ ّﻠ َﻪ ِﰲ ﺃَ ٰﻳﺎ ٍﻡ ٰﻣ ْﻌ ُﺪﻭ َﺩﺍ ٍﺕ‬

Shared Semitic retentions

33

The juxtaposition of the plural ayyām ‘days’ with a plural adjective maʿdūdāt ‘numbered’ is, under most conditions, bad form in modern writing,6 where, to the contrary, deflected agreement with non-human heads is nearly categorical, regularizing the alternate pattern of older Arabic writing: (2.11) lan ta-massa-nā n-nāru illā ayyāman maʿdūda not she-touches-us the-fire except days numbered.fs ‘the fire will not touch us but a number of days’ (Qur’ān 2:80) Here, the plural noun ayyām ‘days’ attracts deflected agreement in its adjective maʿdūda ‘numbered’, exactly as it came to be prescribed. On the other hand, plural concord with non-human tokens is perfectly natural in vernacular Arabic speech: (2.12) a. il-bitinžānāt yalli h·at· t· ē-nā-hon istaw-ū the-eggplants that put-we-them cooked-they ‘The eggplants that we put [on the fire] are done’ b. hallaʾ badd-na n-šīl iln-nuʾat· is-sūd yalli biʾy-ū now want-our we-remove the-spots the-black.pl that remained-they ‘Now we’ll remove the remaining charred spots’ In (2.12a), the verb istaw-ū ‘they became cooked’ in the plural and the 3rd person plural object pronoun -hon in h·at··tēnā-hon ‘we put them’ show strict agreement with their non-human plural heads; likewise the plural sūd of the adjective aswad ‘black’ and the verb biʾy-ū ‘they remained’ in (2.12b). Deliberate evocations of archaic stylistics notwithstanding, it is almost inconceivable that plural concord might be used with eggplants and black spots in modern writing, a medium that scarcely deigns to address such mundane concerns—perhaps in cookbooks, household advice columns, commodity reports, and nowhere else— the prescribed form being categorical deflected agreement with inanimate nonhuman plurals: ta-kūn asʿār al-bādingˇān wa l-filayfila hādihi l-ayyām murtafʿ-a might it-be.fs prices the-eggplant and the-pepper these.fs the-days elevated.fs ‘Eggplant and pepper prices might be higher these days’ (al-Tawra, Syria 2006)

(2.13) qad

6 This particular phrase, however, does appear in modern writing, apparently as a deliberate evocation of the ancient Arabic cadences of the Qur’ān.

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Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

(2.14) al-nuqat· al-sawdāʾ allati rubbamā ya-tawahham-hā ʿuyūn ġayr the-spots the-black.fs that.fs perhaps he-imagines-her eyes not al-xubarāʾ the-experts ‘the black marks, as they may appear to the eyes of non-experts’ (al-Ahram, Egypt, 1999) The discourse in (2.13) and (2.14) represents typical discussions of economic conditions, a legitimate FA venue in which mention of household commodities may of necessity arise (the example in (2.14) comes from a piece about banking), just as they display canonical modern writing agreement arrangements. Thus, in (2.13), the plural noun asʿār ‘prices’ takes deflected agreement in the verb ta-kūn ‘she/it is’ and in the predicate adjective murtafʿa ‘she/it is elevated’ and the deflected agreement of the feminine demonstrative hādihi ‘this’ with ayyām ‘days’; in (2.14), the adjective sawdāʾ ‘black’ is the feminine singular counterpart of its plural form sūd as it appears in (2.12b), and the agreement continues as feminine singular in all succeeding references to the black spots, in the relative adjective allati (masculine alladi), and yatawahhamhā ‘he imagines her’ (i.e. them). Note, too, the masculine singular agreement in the verb ya-tawahham preceding its plural subject, the eyes of non-experts. Given this modern predilection in writing for feminine singular concord with nonhuman plurals, the examples in (2.12a) and (2.12b) might simply be explained away as an eroding in the vernaculars of the nearly categorical deflected agreement of FA. When taken together with the phenomenon of deflected agreement with human plurals, as in (2.6), and the plural agreement with non-human plurals in much older usage, as in (2.10), however, they appear to be of a piece with similar patterns attested in older FA. Belnap (1991, summarized in 1993), who has studied the phenomenon extensively in the spoken Arabic vernacular of Cairo, proposes that the variation in strict and deflected agreement with human plurals in Cairene Arabic is non-random and semantically meaningful: ‘Less specific, more generic heads . . . occur with deflected agreement more often than with more specific heads’ (1991: 76). That is, speakers’ conception of their referents as either specific or general affects their use of strict or deflected agreement. This reflects speaker cognition, with deflected agreement tending to be used with conceptually unified plurals (thus, in examples (2.7) and (2.8) above, all people as a group), while plural agreement tends to be applied to individuated plural entities, seen as countable (or potentially so), as in the few eggplants set on the flame and the charred bits clinging to them after cooking in (2.12), or otherwise groups of distinct individuals, as the clearly definable and delimited group of playwrights of the Egypt of the 1950s and 1960s in (2.9). Belnap and Gee (1994), who have studied such agreement types diachronically within varieties of FA, observe variability in agreement patterns decreasing from the earliest attested examples of Arabic writing to those from later eras, with pre-Islamic

Shared Semitic retentions

35

poetry displaying the highest variability of agreement and the Qur’ān somewhat less so, moving to nearly categorical agreement from the medieval era onwards. Such a ‘striking parallel’ between older forms of Arabic and modern vernaculars leads Belnap to conclude that the variability of agreement patterns in spoken vernacular Arabic appears to be a survival of pre-Islamic patterns, and that the ‘robust survival of such patterns in many, if not most, varieties of spoken Arabic . . . attests to the conservative nature of [the] Arabic dialects, which are popularly believed to be much corrupted descendants of Classical Arabic’ (1999: 179–82). Two other core features attesting to the pre-Islamic diversity of Arabic varieties and the conservative nature of the modern dialects are demonstratives and relative pronouns, about which Al-Jallad rightly observes: ‘they are a fundamental part of a language; therefore, their derivation must have occurred early on in the development of a specific dialect, [and] they are fairly stable and therefore there is little motivation for cross-dialectal borrowing’ (2006: 523). Demonstratives and relative pronouns should thus present good analytical diagnostics for assessing relationships between the dialects of particular languages. Accordingly, Al-Jallad finds evidence for at least two parent stocks for the Arabic dialects, one containing a common Semitic demonstrative *dV (e.g. the Egyptian Arabic dā/dī/dōl) and another in which the demonstrative is ‘accompanied by a mandatory deictic particle: hā’ (2006: 525), as in SyroPalestinian ha(y)da, ha(y)di, and ha(y)dōl ‘this, those’, and for that matter in the analogous hādā, hādhi, and hāʾulāʾ of modern writing. Al-Jallad proposes that these indicate separate origins for the varieties retaining them. His argument for multiple origins of the Arabic spoken vernaculars (or, as he says, their ‘polygenesis’) from two dialect clusters is worth considering, even if he initially continues to give credence to the term ‘Neo-Arabic’, retreating from that stance in a later work (2012: 59–74). Although his bringing the concept of Neo-Arabic under close critical scrutiny, ultimately abandoning it, is commendable, he is premature in establishing a Levantine homeland for Arabic vernaculars (discussed in Chapter 6). Nevertheless, his provisos (one implicit and one explicitly stated) are best kept in mind: modern spoken vernaculars exhibit clusters of features, likely to have been inherited from multiple sources, and modern vernaculars are ‘best understood in terms of individual features, rather than entire dialects’ (2006: 534). The reality of the Arabic vernaculars is that population movements have continued from pre-Islamic times until the present, as groups of Arabic speakers have migrated to new states and commercial centres; Arabic dialects have thus always been in contact, borrowing features from each other (Behnstedt and Woidich 2005: 26). In a dissertation he defended in the year following that of Al-Jallad, Magidow (2013)—while disagreeing that the demonstratives are stable, instead finding ‘numerous indications of near wholesale borrowing of demonstrative paradigms’ (2013: 82, n. 32)—paints a much more nuanced and complex picture of contact and innovation in the development of hā demonstratives from a common Semitic *dV primal form

36

Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

than does Al-Jallad, suggesting contrary to Al-Jallad that the affixed hā was a much later development (pp. 291–2), and that ‘demonstratives are borrowed quite often between different Arabic dialects and so are not a very strong criteria for subgrouping in the classical sense of the comparative method’ (p. 430). Magidow nevertheless makes Al-Jallad’s implicit proviso explicit, utilizing data from Arabic demonstratives to lend strong credence to the idea of a polygenetic origin of dialects. The demonstrative and relative pronouns provide fairly convincing evidence for multiple origins for the modern vernaculars of Arabic, and this is surely a step in the right direction, away from a simplistic monogenesis model such as that posed by an Old Arabic–New Arabic sequence. So, too, does it give reason to begin regarding the pre-diasporic range of Arabic speakers as encompassing not only the Arabian Peninsula but the Fertile Crescent as well, at least in its inner provinces—that is, the Syrian steppes and the upper washes of the Euphrates, if not elsewhere (also emphasised in Behnstedt and Woidich 2005: 24–7). A pre-Islamic Arab presence in those areas is known to history, but such knowledge is not sufficiently emphasized in considerations of the origins of Arabic dialects. We shall return to this in Chapter 6, but for now it must be stated that even Al-Jallad’s treatment of demonstrative and relative pronouns does not definitively settle the question of origins, for older FA admits demonstratives of the dV model, and for that matter tV (Michalski 2011), reflected in its modern retentions of compound forms dālika, dāka, and tilka.7

2.5 Shared dialectal retentions By themselves, these correspondences between older Arabic and the modern vernaculars do not necessarily show that one paradigm preceded the other in time, or that one variety of Arabic derived from the other. The shared agreement patterns and the noun constructs do however suggest that those features in spoken varieties in which they appear are at least as old as FA, lending credence to a hypothesis that the progenitors of the modern dialects came with their speakers during the large-scale migrations out of the Arabian Peninsula that began in the 7th century ad as opposed to those local varieties developing all their features in situ as a result of their contact with non-native speakers of Arabic in the diaspora. What is lacking—or rather, is poorly developed other than in Owens (2005; 2006)—is a body of evidence to show how the features of these spoken varieties relate to FA, whether as daughters or 7 Nor is Al-Jallad’s split between *dV demonstratives and hā+dV in the dialects quite as clear-cut as his analysis would indicate. Zwartjes and Woidich (2012), in analysing the manuscript of an 18th-century grammar of Damascus Arabic, show along with the expected hā+dV forms also dV forms without hā, i.e. deh and dā, the authors remarking: ‘What is striking here is the [demonstratives] without the prefixed hā-. Similar forms are not mentioned in modern grammars and appear only in the village ʿĒn @tTīne, north of Damascus, and in the oasis of Soukhne’ (pp. 325–6).

Shared dialectal retentions

37

sisters. Beyond that, the data presented so far, even in Owens’ convincing argument, all have the feel of exceptional or obscure phenomena, curiosities reaching us from fringe areas such as Nigeria or Uzbekistan,8 often involving details about the treatment of vowels in the conjugation of verbs or plural forms in verbal paradigms, or, as with noun constructs, agreement patterns, and demonstrative pronouns, they appear to be relics from an earlier era. Valuable as such features are, isolated curiosities in a language often being the last surviving remnants of earlier forms, it would be gratifying to find more clues in core morphosyntactic features not shared by FA in the grammars of the spoken varieties of Arabic. Happily, an indication of the age of the precursors of modern Arabic vernaculars is to be had in another set of pronouns: the independent personal pronouns of some vernacular varieties of Arabic, the facts of which have been understood for as long as a century, but the implications of which have only recently begun to be considered (Pat-El 2012a; Wilmsen 2013a). Like demonstratives, a basic feature to any grammar, personal pronouns are probably some of the earliest elements to emerge in the precursors of human language as a whole, all the more in early languages once they had developed. The 3rd person pronouns in all varieties of Arabic are similar to each other such that their genetic relationship is obvious, all derived from some variant of a supposed ancestral form *hū(wa) and *hī(ya), being the masculine and feminine singular forms respectively, the plural forms being similarly derived *hum (ma) and hunna, themselves derived from a Proto-Semitic *šuʾa, *šiʾa, *šu-nu, and ši-nu.9 In the proto-language, these were probably augmented by non-subject pronouns, oblique forms of the pronouns being attested in the two major divisions of the Semitic family, East Semitic and West Semitic. Accordingly, Old Assyrian possessed the oblique masculine singular šu(w)āti, the feminine singular šiāti, and their plural counterparts šunūti and šināti, along with the full complement of oblique personal pronouns, all ending with /ti/. The 3rd person pronouns of Western Semitic languages continue to exhibit the /t/, in the hwt, hyt, and hmt of Ugaritic, the hwt, hyt, and hmt of the Old South Arabian Sabaean language (which also exhibits a 3rd person dual: hmyt), and what appears to be an analogous hwt in an old dialect of Aramaic (Tropper 1993: 267). Some modern Semitic languages, specifically the Ethiopic Tigre and Tigrinya, possess 3rd person pronouns containing a /t/, presumably derived from or related to Geʿez: w@ʾ@tu and w@ʾ@tomu, masculine singular and plural respectively, with y@ʾ@ti and y@ʾ@ton, their feminine counterparts (Lipiński 2001: 307–8). So too do some modern Arabic vernaculars (and one extinct one)

8 Owens (2006: 155–65) persuasively demonstrates how two peripheral dialects separated in time and in geographical distance sharing similar or identical traits must have retained those traits from an earlier common ancestor. 9 The sound change from š > h > ʾ, a diagnostic indicator of the split between East and West Semitic, and its implications for Arabic interrogation and negation, are discussed in Chapter 7.

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Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

possess 3rd person pronouns retaining a /t/. Arabic documents of Andalusia exhibiting vernacular features (discussed at length in Chapter 4) display alternate forms for the 3rd person pronouns in hut, huwat, hiyat, humat, and hunnat, and even a 1st person plural form, h·unat (Corriente 1975: 97). Apparently remnants of the old oblique pronouns—now of course having lost any sense of overt case—the independent pronouns in a few living varieties of vernacular Arabic continue to reflect this /t/, in northern Syrian varieties in what is now Turkey, around Antakya (Behnstedt 2008: 162) and the Palestinian varieties of Bir Zeit and Bethlehem (Bauer 1926: 67; Shachmon 2013). In both areas, the masculine hūta and hūte (or hūtu in Bethlehem) and feminine hīta and hīte are attested. Likewise, some rural Egyptian varieties exhibit variants such as the masculine hūti, huwwati, huwwāti and the feminine hīti, hiyyat, and hiyyāti (Behnstedt and Woidich 1985: maps 148, 149: Woidich 1996: 337). These are retained in the demonstratives in Egyptian Arabics, including those of the capital, which, in addition to the basic forms da, di, and dōl, exhibit a wide range of variants containing /t/: m. dawwat, dahuwwat, dihawwat; f. diyyat, dihiyyat, dahiyyat; and pl. dōlat and dahummat, along with many others, ending in [k] or [n] (Badawi and Hinds 1986: 273; Woidich 2006: 44). Behnstedt (1973–9: 137) specifically derives the commonly occurring dawwat and diyyat from da/di + huwwa/hiyya + t. These are summarized in Table 2.1. Considering that the majority of Arabic dialects do not reflect this /t/, it might be easy to dismiss pronominal forms displaying it as innovative curiosities, were it not for the presence of analogous forms in sister languages. As things stand,

TABLE 2.1 Semitic personal pronouns with /t/ East Semitic Old Assyrian 1s 2ms 2fs 3ms 3fs 2d 3d 1p 2pm 2pf 3pm 3pf

West Semitic Ugaritic

Sabaean

Geʿez

Andalusi Arabic ana anta

hwt hyt

ʾana ʾanta ʾanti w@ʾ@tu y@ʾ@ti

yati ku(w)āti šu(w)āti šiāti šunīti niāti kunūti kināti šunūti šināti

hwt hyt

hu(wa(t)) hi(ya(t))

Arabic dialects

hūta, huwwat, etc. hīte, hiyyat, etc.

hmyt

hmt

hmt hnt

n@h·na ʾant@mmu ʾant@n w@ʾ@tomu y@ʾ@ton

h·inat antum hum(a(t)) hunnat

dōlat, dahummat

In conclusion

39

however, those Arabic dialects retaining a /t/ in the personal pronouns—and the demonstrative forms ultimately derived from them—would appear in this regard to have preserved an older feature that other varieties, including FA, have lost. That is, they are retentions of older Semitic forms shared with sister languages, and in that respect, the predecessors of the Arabic dialects retaining the earlier forms of the 3rd person pronouns are at least as old as the ancestors of those that have lost the /t/.

2.6 In conclusion, the way forward This is precisely the type of evidence needed for establishing the relative age of the modern spoken varieties of Arabic. Increasing our confidence would be evidence of core grammatical features well-established and widespread in Arabic vernaculars that are (i) not shared by FA but (ii) shared with sister languages. The interrogation and negation systems of the spoken Arabic vernaculars are good candidates for this, for they meet the first criterion handily, interrogation, especially, but also negation, being a realm of the syntax in which many or most spoken Arabic varieties diverge from FA. As it happens, the second criterion is also met, for the same features, or at least their precursors, are present in sister languages. Just how they are related remains to be explored. With that in mind, this work takes up the challenge Owens presents when, commenting upon the evidence he marshals in favour of a new view of the linguistic history of Arabic, he observes that even though his dialect surveys are ‘broad and representative, they are by no means detailed enough’. Nor are they meant to be, for, ‘there can be no reasonable synthesis of Arabic language history until far more historical comparative studies are carried out on individual features in individual dialects and dialect areas’ (Owens 2006: 268). In that spirit, this book examines a related set of features, interrogation and negation with reflexes of /š/. Such interrogation is more widely distributed amongst Arabic dialect areas than is negation with -š; but we shall nevertheless begin by examining negation, expanding the inquiry as it becomes necessary, and moving backwards in time as the investigations continue. This negation technique, sometimes involving the discontinuous sequence mā . . . š, sometimes standing alone, has attracted consistent comment and scholarly attention (Woidich 1968; Obler 1975; 1990; Davies 1981; Benmamoun 2000; Ouhalla 2002; Palva 2004; Hoyt 2007; Lucas 2007; 2010; Lucas and Lash 2010; Aoun et al. 2010). It is sufficient to adduce a few examples from the spoken vernacular Arabic of Cairo, perhaps the iconic Arabic variety negating with enclitic -š (the first three sets of examples derived from Woidich 2006: 334–6):

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Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

Verbal negation: katab ‘he wrote’ bi-yi-ktib ‘he writes’

> >

ma-katab-š ‘he didn’t write’ ma-byiktib-š ‘he doesn’t write’

Predicate negation: ana ʿārif ‘I know’ huwwa mawgūd ‘he’s here’

> >

ana miš ʿārif ‘I don’t know’ huwwa miš mawgūd ‘he’s not here’

Non-predicate denial:10 ana ʿarf-ak ‘I know you’ huwwa mawgūd ‘he is here’

> >

ma-nīš ʿarf-ak ‘I don’t know you’ ma-huwwāš mawgūd ‘he’s not here’

Pseudo-verb negation: fī ‘there is’ bidd-i ‘I want’ maʿ-āk ‘you have’ ʿand-ak ‘you have’

> > > >

ma-fī-š ‘there isn’t’ ma-bidd-ī-š ‘I don’t want’ ma maʿ-ak-š ‘you don’t have’ ma-ʿand-ak-š ‘you don’t have’

Also emblematic in Palestinian and some varieties of Syrian Arabic, especially but not exclusively with pseudo-verbs, -š assumes the entire burden of the task of negating: ma-fī-š ma-bidd-ī-š ma maʿ-ak-š ma ʿand-ak-š

> > > >

fī-š ‘there isn’t’ bidd-ī-š ‘I don’t want’ maʿ-ak-š ‘you don’t have’ ʿand-ak-š ‘you don’t have’11

The usual assumption in discussions of negation with reflexes of /š/ is that the original form of the /š/ appearing at the end of the negator or at the end of the negated predicate is the Arabic words meaning ‘thing’: šayʾ. So widespread is this assumption that any mention of the phenomenon, even in works not necessarily addressing it directly, makes mention of this supposed etymology.12 Yet, aside from a purely superficial similarity between šayʾ and the negator, an enclitic -š or its alternate ši, no sound evidence exists for a grammaticalization sequence, or cline, beginning with the substantive word ‘thing’ and ending as a grammatical marker of negation.

10 The terms come respectively from Woidich (2006: 336) and Mughazy (2008a), the latter providing a detailed explication of the pragmatic difference between denial and negation, the negation ma-pro-š being reserved for ‘the pragmatic speech act of denying affirmative old propositions’ (p. 75). 11 Without a pre-posed mā, this particular pseudo-verb usually, but not always, forms a question ‘don’t you have?’ or even ‘you don’t happen to have?’ 12 It would be cumbersome to list all of those here and misleading (and perhaps unfair) to adduce but a few of them, as if certain researchers were especially prone to drawing such an etymology. Suffice it to say that in the works touching upon the subject cited throughout this study, if an etymology is proposed, it is that one.

In conclusion

41

The source of the assumption itself would appear to be the 2nd/8th-century grammarian and commentator on the Qur’ān al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822), who, when discussing not the negator -š but the interrogative ʾayš, writes, ‘Among the things that are frequent in Arab speech . . . is their saying ʾayš ʿind-ak [what have you?], wherein they elide the case vowels of ʾayy and one of the letters {y} and the glottal stop from šayʾ, also changing the vowels from /a/ to /i/ on the /š/’(n.d.: 2). This explanation assumes many a change that, were it to be proposed by modern analysts, might rightfully be challenged as being difficult to motivate. Yet the assertion had become dogma some 200 years later, as more explicitly stated with no attempt at a phonological analysis by al-Taʿālibī (d. 430/1038), the dogma persisting almost verbatim since his day: ‘As they [some Arabic speakers] say, ʾayš, the origin of which is ʾayyu šayʾin [‘which thing’]’ (2010: 400).13 These comments indicate that the earliest writers about Arabic knew the interrogative ʾayš to be widespread—or at least frequently occurring—in the Arabic vernaculars of their day. That a similar explanation is nowadays proffered about the origin of negation with reflexes of /š/ gives reason to investigate both the source of negating and of forming interrogatives with analogues apparently derived from a single lexical source. Evidently, no one has thought to query these similarities closely in order to assess a genetic relationship between the two, were any to be found. Instead, focusing on negation and remarking a similarity between the discontinuous Arabic negator mā . . . š and that of the French ne . . . pas, theorists have been happy to ascribe this to a language universal, attributing it to Danish linguist Otto Jespersen (d. 1943), who held that European languages tended to run in cycles in the development of their negation systems, wherein negation begins with preposed elements (e.g. ne) at the head of a phrase, acquires a reinforcing element in the form of a word commonly following the negated phrase (e.g. French point or pas); this becomes inextricably associated with negation, eventually acquiring more negative force than the original negator itself. The original negator may then be lost, leaving the post-positive negator to assume the entire burden of negation. At the opening of his 1917 study of negation, Jespersen describes the process: The history of negative expressions in various languages makes us witness the following curious fluctuation: the original negative adverb is first weakened, then found insufficient and therefore strengthened, generally through some additional word, and this in turn may be felt as the negative proper and may then in the course of time be subject to the same development as the original word. (Jespersen 1917: 4)

13 Larcher (2001: 596, n. 24) attributes the notion to commentators on Astarābādī (d. 797/1395) and Ibn Yaʿīš (d. 643/1295) in his commentary on al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144). Whether or not these commentators were simply parroting al-Farrāʾ and al-Taʿālibī, this very chain of transmission illustrates the selfperpetuating, mythological quality of this venerable supposition.

42

Age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars

A Swedish linguist of a succeeding generation, Östen Dahl (b. 1945), first gave the cycle its name in a 1979 study that he conducted of 240 languages from 40 language families, concluding: ‘preverbal Neg is the a natural universal tendency which may be disturbed by an equally natural diachronic process, viz. Jespersen’s Cycle’ (Dahl 1979: 95).14 Ashby in 1976 and 1981 developed further the notion of a cycle of negation in French in a longitudinal study, attesting the omission of ne as early as the 13th century, augmenting his observations with variable data from the present. This was not to pass uncontested, however, and Ashby produced more data in 1991 in answer to critics. Among the objections that he attempts to rebut with statistical data in his latter paper (1991), without however succeeding in laying the matter to rest, was that the higher incidence of the dropping of ne in younger French speakers did not necessarily represent a syntactic change in progress; he also observed: ‘it appears that the dropping of the first negative began in interrogative sentences’ (1991: 6). Critics argue that the situation was in fact stable, persisting over centuries. What is more, Price (1993) counters that the early occurrences of Ashby’s negators are entirely different types of constructions, involving first a positive assertion which is eventually reanalysed with some degree of negative polarity.15 All of these propositions—that French is losing the pre-posed negator ne, indicated by younger speakers omitting it at a greater frequency than do their elders; that it is somehow related to interrogation; and even that its variability is old and stable— have bearing on observations about Arabic. Notably, that negation in some Arabic dialects may proceed with a post-positive š alone, without a preposed mā, is taken as prima facie evidence that those dialects have passed through or are passing through Jespersen’s Cycle. Without actually using the term, Obler (1975: 112–13) remarks the greater frequency of negating without a pre-posed mā amongst younger speakers in the Palestinian village where she collected her data, hinting that this signals a change in progress. Lucas (2007) takes it as given that just such a cycle has been operating in Arabic. He too notices the interrogative and conditional qualities of a post-positive negation in Cairene Arabic, without pursuing the matter further (Lucas 2010: 168–71, 183–5). Along with others (e.g. Hoyt 2007), he makes much of differences between local varieties of Arabic negating with post-positive -š, implying (and in Lucas’ case overtly stating) that these point to separate origins of the system. Such a conclusion follows almost by necessity from adopting the notion that the spoken vernaculars of Arabic are younger than if not directly descended from FA. Nevertheless, differences of detail notwithstanding, the remarkable similarities in the widely dispersed negation systems of spoken Arabic from Oman to Morocco, and

14 His first use and definition of the term ‘Jespersen’s Cycle’ is on p. 88. Hansen (2011) summarizes the cycle as currently understood. 15 Such criticisms notwithstanding, the cyclic quality of negation in French is widely accepted. Hansen (2013) refines the model, demonstrating three separate cycles in operation.

In conclusion

43

the even more widely dispersed interrogation systems, suggest a common origin for both. Local variations must have arisen as historical accidents owing to the individual circumstances of each of the varieties. Assumptions about separate functions arising from the same lexical source implicitly posit independent paths of grammaticalizations for interrogators and negators and (even less defensible) separate paths of grammaticalization for the various manners of negation with reflexes of /š/. Whereas such hypotheses are not unfeasible, before they can confidently be adopted, the possibility of a common original form and function must first be discounted. The similarities between interrogators and negators built upon reflexes of /š/ along with their wide geographical distribution suggests the possibility of an ultimate common source. Finding that will necessitate adopting a longer perspective, which perforce entails suspending the notion that all interrogative and negation functions of reflexes of /š/ are relatively young elements of ‘Neo-Arabic’ in those dialects displaying them, albeit about 1,000 years in age.

3 fīš wa biddīš The functions of šī In his work on grammaticalization in Arabic, explaining the concept of reanalysis, Esseesy (2009: 39; 2010: 11, 65) illustrates the process with a hypothesized sequence from šayʾ to -š, ending in negation with -š alone, echoing a point of view by no means unique to him. Without specifically invoking Jespersen’s Cycle, he envisions a developmental sequence, or cline, for the negator, conforming to it, and proceeding thus: Stage 0

Stage I

Stage II

Stage III

mā bi-wudd-ī šayʾun not with-desire-my thing ‘I do not desire a thing’ mā bi-dd-ī šēʾ not with-desire-my thing ‘I do not desire a thing’ mā bidd-ī-š not want-my-not ‘I don’t want’ bidd-ī-š want-my-NEG ‘I don’t want’

From such a beginning, in Esseesy’s view, the negative marker -š goes on to become ‘essential to negations . . . in verbal constructions, as well (e.g. in Egyptian Arabic mākatabte-š ‘I did not write’)’ (Esseesy 2010: 65–6). The sequence appears intuitively defensible, even if it is (as Esseesy admits) highly schematic, providing no details about how the development may have come about, except to say that it was by reanalysis, leaving the dynamics of the process unexamined. Upon reflection, however, it becomes problematic: the pseudo-verb bidd- can indeed take an object, as the hypothesis shows, but when that object is pronominal, it is marked by the pronominal object marker yā- and when negated, the -š (if it occurs) affixes directly to the pseudo-verb:

The functions of šī (3.1)

45

a. bidd-i yā-h wish-my yā-it ‘I want it’ b. bidd-ī-š yā-h wish-my-š yā-it ‘I don’t want it’

Aside from the difficulty in imaging how the object noun šayʾ might have inserted itself into the construction, at some stage in the process of grammaticalization reduplicating the object nominally and pronominally, there is no trace of the process actually having ever taken place in the dialects where that pseudo-verb occurs. A similar problem arises with verbs: the sequence fails to account for the sudden change of valence the verb would have undergone as it went from *ma kataba šayʾan (with the /-an/ indicating the accusative case), losing its object to become ma katabš. The construction must then assume the onus of recovering the object when needed, once it had been lost (Woidich 1990: 139). True, kataba may either be transitive or intransitive, but that only compounds the difficulty. For, if the process is supposed to have operated upon the verb in its transitive usage, there is no motivation for applying the same procedure to its intransitive state. Both objections indicate a larger problem: the assumptions are never supported by linguistically defensible mechanisms. Instead, they seem to have been adopted whole from medieval linguistic traditions about the Arabic dialects arising as corruptions of FA. This implicitly raises another difficulty: the process begins with the assumption that the parent form of these features of the spoken vernaculars of Arabic was the fully inflected variety of Arabic that became the vehicle for writing. It is, however, rather an absurdity to propose that the Arabic of writing had anything to do with a reanalysis of a reflex of šayʾun as a grammatical marker of any sort. Reanalysis must work amongst speakers of a language, either while they are acquiring it as their native tongue or later in their adult usage. There are no native speakers of FA to impart to their children any aspect of the language for reanalysis while they are acquiring it; meanwhile, the many gatekeepers to FA militate against adult speakers’ initiating any such dramatic innovations in their writing. An examination of the facts, however, provides conclusions that are more nuanced, robust, and ultimately defensible, leading ineluctably to a view of the history of Arabic diametrically opposed to that informing the ideologically driven perceptions that Owens (2006: 33–7, 74–7) charitably calls ‘logical’ but untested. This may be illustrated in a brief exercise, taking a data-driven approach to the question of origins of dialect features.

46

The functions of šī

3.1 Tracing the origin and development of the pseudo-verb biddOne of the assumptions in the model sequence outlined above is that the pseudo-verb bidd- of the Levantine dialects began with an FA noun wuddun ‘wish/desire’, eventually leading to constructions like biddīš. This presumes that the construction bi-wudd-i šayʾun ‘in my desire, [is] a thing’ and its negation are recoverable in that variety. That presumption can be tested by means of a search of the enormously useful arabiCorpus database of Brigham Young University.1 With recent additions, the corpus embodies almost 174 million words of Arabic writing, derived from contemporary Arabic newspapers, representing a broad geographical range across Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Kuwait, amounting to some 135 million words; just over a million words of modern fiction and non-fiction writing; and roughly 9 million words of pre-modern Arabic, including one of the many recensions of the 1001 Nights, probably one of the Bulaq editions of the 19th century; some medieval philosophical and scientific writings; the entire text of the Qur’ān; all six major books of the Sunna and a few of the minor works; the recently added texts of ih·yāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn of al-Ghazali of the 6th/12th century and the 8th/14th-century work al-muqaddima of Ibn Khaldun; some adab works, including rasāʾil of al-Jāh·iz and the ˙ voluminous kitāb al-aġāni, which actually displays vernacular usage; and several classical grammatical treatises spanning seven centuries, beginning with the 2nd/8thcentury work al-kitāb of Sībawayhi and ending with the 9th/15th-century hamʿ al-hawāmiʿ of Suyūtī. The corpus thus provides a perspective encompassing some ˙ of the earliest recorded Arabic writing in the Qur’ān, al-kitāb, and the Hadīt ˙ literature; the medieval periods in the writings of the grammarians and philosophers such as Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina, and al-Ghazali; the early modern period in what appears to be one of the Bulaq editions of the Nights; and a broad range of modern newspaper, fiction, and non-fiction writing. A search of this extensive corpus reveals that the construction bi-wudd- apparently does not collocate with šayʾ in any genre of Arabic writing. The construction occurs thirty times in the pre-modern sub-corpora; in the modern literature sub-corpus, where it might have been expected to appear often in dialogue, only five times; and all of 156 times in the newspapers.2 What is more, the most commonly occurring word to follow immediately after the construction b-wdd- in modern writing is not šayʾun but the complementizer ʾan ‘that’. Appearing 111 times, five times in the pre-modern 1

The corpus is available freely at this URL: http://arabicorpus.byu.edu/. The search term was \b[wf]?bwd(y|h|hA|k|km|hm|hmA|kmA|kn|hn|nA)\b, which will capture any permutation of the sequence: bi-wdd-ī, bi-wdd-h, bi-wdd-hā, bi-wdd-ka, etc. Almost half were false hits that had to be culled by hand, such as a few duplicate phrases; frequently occurring names like ‘Jasim Boudy’, ‘Mustafa Boudy’, ‘Nejude Boudy’, and other members of the Boudy family; and the many instances of the terms ‘body guard’ and ‘body shop’; and a single mention of Bodhidharma, etc., all captured with the sequence bwdy. 2

The pseudo-verb bidd-

47

corpus, it is by far the most common collocate, with the conditional law ‘if ’, at nineteen occurrences, coming in a distant second. Together, those two amount to almost 70 per cent of all collocations in the data (n = 130/191).3 For its part, the most common word preceding the construction is kān ‘was’, itself never preceded by the negator mā in any of its 76 occurrences, even though that negator, while disfavoured in modern writing as a whole, continues in that use precisely with the verb ‘to be’, especially when it appears in the perfect. Rather, in the six instances in which the construction is negated, it is with laysa, like mā also meaning ‘not’. Considering the size of the modern sub-corpora, it becomes clear that the construction bi-wudd- does not often occur in any permutation in modern writing, and where it does appear, it is never with šayʾ. In the pre-modern subcorpus, by far the greatest number of occurrences comes in al-aġāni but without any negation. That it never appears in the Sunna collections—all composed before al-aġāni, works that presume to record speech—is telling. The earliest of these, S·ah·īh· al-Bukhārī, was compiled before 256/870, the latest in the corpus being as-Sunan al-Kubrā by anNasāʾī (d. 303/915). Thus in the 3.5 million words of some of the earliest recorded Arabic speech, edited to reflect ‘proper’ written style, not a single instance occurs. If the construction were a permissible element of canonical Arabic writing, as the assumed development cline supposes, it should occasionally appear in written records of living speech; but it does not.4 Thus, to suppose that biddīš developed out of mā bi-wudd-i šayʾun is to build a hypothesis upon a source construction that, while to all appearances grammatically permissible, on the evidence does not occur in writing.5 On the other hand, it is unremarkable to encounter analogous utterances in vernacular speech. Reflexes of wudd, from which bidd- presumably derives, exist in a broad range of local vernaculars, often with the full form and the reduced existing alongside each other. This is famously true of the Levantine dialects; it is, for example, common to hear variations of bi-widdī amongst rural Jordanians, or even a reflex of /wdd/ alone.6 Likewise, there

3 It happens that at eighty-four occurrences, b-wdd-ī with the 1st person possessive suffix [-ī] appears almost as often as all other permutations combined. 4 This being a corpus of largely canonical written Arabic, it is no surprise that the spoken form biddoccurs in it not at all. 5 The common assumption also gives the impression that the wudd pronounced with a /u/ is the original or only FA form, perhaps because of its single occurrence in the Qur’ān (19:96). In truth, it can be rendered in FA with any of the three short vowels /u/, /a/, or /i/, as it is in the various vernaculars (Lane 1984: 2931: ‘wudd, widd, wadd, of the which, the first is more common’). We are safe in supposing that an original /a/ of wadd survives in the reflex badd- in Northern Palestinian (Blanc 1953: 82–7, 97) and Lebanese (Fleisch 1974: 156). For examples, see Blanc (1953: 85, 97): šuw badda taʿmal ‘what can they [lit. she] do’ and kull insān baddu ymuwt ‘every person will die’. The full form also appears now and then in the spoken Arabic of Damascus, as in kan b-wǝddi zūr-ak ‘I wanted to visit you’. See Bergsträsser (1915: map 20) for distribution in the Levant. 6 I recently heard a taxi driver in Amman saying widd-u fatra ‘it wants some time’, speaking of renovations to that city’s Queen Alia International Airport (now completed).

48

The functions of šī

are dialects where it is less emblematic. For example, in Egyptian Arabic, b-widdi ‘I want’ and its alternate, biddi, both survive. Although their appearance nowadays is rare in Cairene speech, they were probably more common earlier, as both appear in folk sayings:7 in kān bidd-ak t-sūn il-ʿard wa t-limmu-h, ˙ ˙ if was wish-your you-preserve the-honour and you-gather-it gawwiz bint-ak li-lli ʿēn-ha minn-uh marry daughter-your to-which eye-her from-him ‘If you wish to preserve your honour, marry your daughter to the one she has her eye on’ (El Khanagri 1986: 20)8 As late as the mid-20th century bidd was familiar enough in the Cairene vernacular to permit lyricist Ahmad Rami to use it in a composition for the enormously popular singer Umm Kulthum: (3.2)

(3.3)

bidd-i a-škī la-k min nār h·ubb-i; bidd-i a-h·kī la-k wish-my I-complain to-you from fire love-my wish-my I-tell to-you ʿa-lli f-ʾalb-i about-which in-heart-my ‘I want [biddi] to complain to you of the fire of my love; I want [biddi] to tell you of what is in my heart’

Woidich (1995: 283) confirms that biddi was more common in Cairene Arabic in the 19th century, and that it is still used in Middle Egypt and in the Šarqiyya province of the Nile Delta (for examples of usage, see Woidich 1980: 34, l. 32; 46, l. 24; 50, l. 4). Elsewhere (2006: 318) he adduces the presumed parent form widd- in use in the western Delta: il-wadd widdu ybāt ʿandina ‘the boy wants to spend the night with us’. Badawi and Hinds (1986: 292), from speech data collected in the 1980s, adduce bi-widdi asāfir ‘I want to travel’. So too do widd- and wudd- ‘wish, desire’ live on in Gulf and Peninsular vernaculars (Holes 2010: 276–7; Ingham 1994: 150; Johnstone 1967: 154) and in the Yemen as budd- (Piamenta 1990: 520). This means that the original sources of the expression biddi and its inflections are amply available in the spoken vernaculars as resources for reanalysis, vitiating the need for appeals to FA. That such constructions are to be heard in speech but are not found in writing provides all the more reason for regarding with scepticism reconstructions appealing to written Arabic.

7 In a 14th-century treatise on folk poetry (1981: 100), Iraqi poet S·afī al-Dīn al-Hillī (d. ad 1349) ˙ documents it in a zajal from Egypt. 8 El Khanagri explains: ‘The girl’s opinion must be respected in engagement and marriage, that her marriage be stable and peaceful.’

The -š of biddīš

49

3.2 The -š of biddīš The second part of the construction, the negative enclitic -š, is conventionally portrayed as having progressed from šayʾun to -š along a cline, at which a postpositive -š alone is a terminal stage or nearly so. Yet, aside from some recent speculation about the negative polarity of the noun in early classical writings (Lucas 2010: 180; Lucas and Lash 2010: 397–8), there appears to be no motivation in canonical Arabic writing for its reanalysis a marker of grammatical negativity. Lucas and Lash suppose that a precursor is found in the Qur’ānic šayʾan acting as a negative polarity adverb (the accusative case marking adverbials in Arabic). Nevertheless, as the authors concede, the contexts in which it often appears is as the argument of a verb, hence nominal not adverbial. What is more, if such a trend were a genuine reflection of movement toward negative polarity, we would expect to see an increase in such usage over time. In fact, just the opposite occurs. Turning again to the arabiCorpus—which among its many useful features can show the frequency of words collocated with a search item, not necessarily those immediately preceding and following the term in the texts we find that, as in our discussion of bidd-—it appears that šayʾan collocates with negators lā, lam, lan, and mā about 82 per cent of the time in the Qur’ān. This drops to 52 per cent in pre-modern Arabic writing, and 49 per cent in modern literature, only returning to near-parity with Quranic usage in modern journalistic writing, where it collocates with negators 79 per cent of the time. That these sub-corpora are of vastly differing sizes prompts caution in interpreting results. The most that can be said is that the noun šayʾ may be associated with some kind of negative polarity in certain genres of writing; but under the circumstances, that by itself says little about any potential reanalysis as a negator. Aside from their begging the question, appeals to the canons of Arabic writing direct attention away from living processes of the spoken language. Texts displaying less than canonical writing are in this regard more helpful than those punctiliously adhering to the rigid strictures of canonical written Arabic developed and refined beginning in the 2nd/8th century. Even in those texts—presumably reflecting their writers’ own vernacular usage, the earliest appearing about a century later—clues to a reanalysis of šay as a negative marker are sparse. Deprived of FA as a source and finding only a few clues in historical works, we are left with no realistic choice than to seek the origin of negative -š in the dialects. There, remnants of the process of its transformation are on display, wherein reflexes of šī persist both as a function word and as a substantive. Nevertheless, evidence in the dialects for both functional and content applications to the word and its reflexes can be interpreted in more ways than one, and by itself says nothing about the relative age of either feature, nor does it provide indication of separate origins for FA and the dialects; indeed, all that it seems to suggest is a common origin for the feature in all varieties of Arabic in which it is found.

50

The functions of šī

3.3 Conventional views Living Arabic varieties from Egypt to Morocco (including Malta) negate with -š in strikingly similar manners. The varieties of the Yemen and the Levant share affinities in their negation techniques with those of North Africa. Breaks in continuity occur only in the Hijaz and the Sinai Peninsula. So similar are these disperse dialects in their negating techniques that initial attempts at explaining them should begin first by proposing a common origin for the features involved, only proceeding to other explanations after eliminating that as a possibility. Yet recent treatments of the phenomenon take the opposite course, either supposing multiple reanalyses of the word for ‘thing’ or at best proposing that the phenomenon arose once as an innovation and spread by diffusion to other parts of the Arab world after the migration of large numbers of Arabic speakers out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 1st/7th century. Assuming a relatively recent (i.e. about a millennium old), post-diaspora origin for the phenomenon delimits the options, almost forcing such conclusions. Remaining agnostic on the question, while suggesting either as a possibility, Obler, in an earlier survey of the dialects interrogating and negating with -š (1990: 136), begins by assuming that ‘Classical Arabic, whatever its status, can in any case be taken as representative of a form of Arabic earlier than that of the modern dialects’ (1975: 20; 1990: 136), even while admitting the problematic nature of this assumption. For their parts, Lucas (2007) and Lucas and Lash (2010) also take FA as the starting point while refining the single-origin hypothesis, arguing that the negation with -š came about as a result of contact between speakers of older Arabic and Coptic after the large-scale migrations out of the Arabian Peninsula. Obler in her 1975 dissertation undertakes a thoroughgoing survey of all the phenomena related to what she calls reflexes of šayʾun (1975: 25–72). The functions she covers are numerous and varied, including those as negative markers; as interrogatives, separately exhibiting varying semantic properties: tag questions, questions soliciting information, those requiring a yes/no response, and indirect queries; a related function that she calls ‘indefinitizers’ (e.g. ‘whatever’); quantifiers; and even a possessive function as a genitive exponent. She nevertheless leaves much to be said about all of these functions, especially leaving open the question of their origins, except, as noted, to suppose they all derive from the word for ‘thing’. This is the standard explanation for both negators and interrogatives of all types built upon reflexes of /š/. Implicit within this is that in all of their functions these reflexes of /š/ originated in separate processes.

3.4 Grammaticalization of šay The proposition that the negator -š originally arose from a reflex of šay ‘thing’, and indeed that bidd- began as a content word meaning ‘wish/want/desire/love’ to

Partitive ši

51

become a multi-function pseudo-verb, conforms to the paradigmatic definition of grammaticalization, which sees the process as proceeding from lexical to grammatical, wherein a content word gradually loses its meaning as it assumes a functional role in the grammar of a language. In other words, meaning proceeds from concrete to abstract. Along the way, the process generally leaves relics of earlier stages of its development, such that if -š, a grammatical enclitic, truly did have its beginnings in the content word šay, losing all lexical meaning to assume a grammatical function, we would expect to find residues of the process in the language. As Campbell (2013: 284) observes, in the processes of grammaticalization, whereby content words over time become inflectional affixes, ‘often the source of the grammaticalization remains in the language with its former meaning alongside the new grammaticalized form’. That is, remnants of the grammaticalization process should linger in the language, available to assist in reconstruction. This is how the process is envisioned in the seminal work on the subject (Hopper and Traugott 2003), and indeed how Esseesy (2010) presents it as operating in Arabic as a whole, both in FA and in the dialects. Nevertheless, while it is certainly true that various forms of a grammatical marker /ši/ are still very much present in Arabic, assuming multiple roles in the spoken vernaculars in which they appear, a close examination of their operation points to a different origin from that posited by the conventional grammaticalization paradigm. It will be our purpose henceforward to examine the manifestations of šī, following them where they lead.

3.5 Partitive ši Cowell (1964/2005: 467) has observed that in Syrian Arabic the word šī can serve as a member of the class called ‘partitives’, which he defines to ‘include nouns designating indefinite proportions and quantities’. Glossing partitive ši as ‘some, a’, he adduces as examples of usage ši lah·me ‘some meat’ or ši bint h·ǝlwe ‘a (or some) pretty girl’. Harrell (1965/2010: 147, 189) goes so far as to label it as one of two indefinite articles in Moroccan (the other being wah·ed ‘one’), asserting that they are actually affixed to the noun, as a true article might be. Whether ši is an independent word or an affix in Moroccan, it functions in the same manner as its Syrian counterparts, for example, ši-r·ažel ‘a man, some sort of man, some man or another’ or ši-ktab ‘a book, some sort of book, some book or another’ (Harrell 1965/2004: 147).9 Brustad (2000: 19, 26–7) argues convincingly that in both varieties such use indicates a partial specificity between fully definite and completely indefinite substantives. It thus answers a need Brustad identifies, ‘to represent a range of undefined, partially defined and 9

Harrell transcribes the word without the long vowel /ī/, and indeed, its immediate phonological environment affects its vowel quality, such that the vowel is in fact usually not long. Following Harrell, this work will usually transcribe it as short, except when citing others adducing it as long.

52

The functions of šī

fully defined entities . . . [which] includes nouns that are syntactically indefinite, but carry a degree of specific reference’ (p. 27). Similarly, Davies (1981: 272), in writing about 17th-century Egyptian Arabic and labelling the same word an ‘indefinite quantifier’, explains that it denotes ‘an indefinite collectivity of a certain unspecified amount’. Documenting its myriad uses in Moroccan and calling it a ‘déterminant’, Caubet (1993a: 186) would appear to agree with this assessment, noting that its function is different from both an unmarked noun and the indefinite article wah·ed. In addition to the examples adduced by Brustad, Caubet, Cowell, Davies, and Harrell consider its use in a familiar Lebanese Arabic context in the lyrics of two songs of the Lebanese diva Fairuz: (3.4)

a. bi-t-žib l-i minn-u tizkār ši warʾa w ši sūra ˙ you-bring for-me from-him memento ši paper or ši picture ‘Bring me a memento from him: a bit of paper, some old photo’ b. sār l-i ši mīt sini ʿamm-ʾallif ʿanāwīn miš maʿrūfi la-mīn ˙ became to-me ši 100 year I-compose addresses not known to-whom ‘It’s been some hundred years that I’ve been addressing letters to who knows whom’

Aside from indicating some indefinite quantity, the meaning of the word itself is underspecified, such that the glosses here can only render approximate meaning. Others have remarked upon this. About partitives specifically, Watson (1993: 190), writing about a variety of Yemeni Arabic, notes correctly: ‘The sense of these terms can only be precisely determined from the context.’10 About discourse markers generally, Alkhalil (2005: 231) remarks, ‘it is not always easy to give an exclusive translation of this or any other Syrian discourse marker.’ Harrell observes that while ši in Moroccan Arabic is usually best conceived as meaning ‘some’, context can change that: The difference between the two indefinite articles has various implications for usage and translation. For example, the two sentences wah·ed n-nahar· šeftu fe-s-suq and ši-nahar· šeftu fe-s-suq are approximately the same in meaning and translate as ‘I saw him in the market one day’. (Harrell 1965/2010: 189)

In all these conceptions, the word does encompass some partitive function, meaning that it lends some vaguely quantifiable specificity to a generic class of substantive. In that regard, the term ‘partitive’ is appropriate, as partitives evoke ‘a single entity as one among a number of entities, but otherwise indistinguishable from them’ (Hirtle 1988: 465). Used as such, they function as quantifiers, if only with slightly quantifiable effect. Yet ši performs other functions, only tangentially related to the partitive. This 10 Piamenta (1990: 272–3) gives some half a dozen idiomatic usages for ši in Yemeni Arabic, considered more closely in Chapter 6.

Polar interrogative ši

53

means that the term ‘partitive’, usually involved in some kind of enumeration, however vague, is too restricting. Instead of the label ‘partitive’ or ‘quantifier’, Caubet’s less restrictive term ‘determiner’ is more appropriate. Consistent with an indefinite determiner function as marking a quality somewhere between indefinite and definite and a partitive function marking some indefinite quantity, in some contexts it means something like ‘some’, ‘any’, or even ‘a’:11 (3.5)

a. bit-lāʾī-h fi ši funduʾ you-find-it in ši hotel ‘You’ll find it at some hotel’ b. ʿand-ak h·assāsiyya min ši dawa at-yours allergy from ši medicine ‘Do you have an allergy to any medicine?’ c. yih maʿa-ki ši bastōn@ ! with-you ši club [suit in cards] ‘Oh! You have a club!’

3.6 Polar interrogative ši In some contexts, the communicative force of ši encompasses more than the meaning ‘a/some/any’ and carries an interrogative function. Even while retaining reference to the same type of syntactically indefinite but specific entity, it can be added to the end of ‘statements to turn them into yes/no questions’, as Holes illustrates: (3.6)

ʿand-ak flūs ši with-you money thing12 ‘Do you have any money?’ (Holes 2004: 192)

There is more to such sentences than simply the elicitation of a yes/no response, as yes/no questions may be formed without the assistance of ši. What is more, the order can be rearranged with ši appearing before the noun while retaining its same connotation: ʿand-ak ši flūs ‘do you have any money?’; and in Yemeni varieties, when used as an interrogative, it can appear at the beginning of the phrase: (3.7)

šīʾ zalat ? ˙ šiʾ pebbles ‘Do you have any money?’ (Piamenta 1990: 272)

11 Unattributed examples are from my own data. Example (3.5c) is from a study of a dialect of the village Zeitoun in the Keserwan district of Mt Lebanon, near Beirut, conducted by Natalie Khairallah (2014) under my supervision, the utterance coming in a game of cards between some of her subjects. 12 Holes’ rendering of ši in the running gloss as ‘thing’ is evidently a reference to its supposed etymon, and not a reflection of how it is functioning or even perceived by speakers in such contexts.

54

The functions of šī

It can appear at the head of the phrase in Syrian varieties, too: (3.8)

ši maʿ-ak masāri ? ˙ ši with-you money ‘Do you have any money?’

Coming at the head of the phrase, it also marks the entire phrase as a question, in the same way that ʾa and hal may introduce polar yes/no questions (for which, see van Rooy and Šafářová 2003) in Arabic writing, meaning something like ‘is it that . . . ?’ just as it does when it appears at the end of the phrase. This lends to ši the quality of an existential particle. We shall return to that quality of ši in later chapters. For now, while conceding that Holes is correct in remarking its use as an interrogative and that it is often placed at the end of an utterance, we must also allow that wherever it appears, its denotation is vague, with no easily identifiable referent to which it could be associated as an indefinite determiner: (3.9)

a. inti mittasla fi-ya ˙ you contacted in-me ‘Did you call me?’

ši ši

b. fī h·araka fi-d-dunyā ši is movement in-the-world ši ‘Is there anything happening?’ c. inta h·āsis bi wažaʿ ši you feeling in pain ši ‘Are you in pain?’ d. inta bit-ʾarrib l-u ši you you-relate to-him ši ‘Are you related to him?’ In the first of these, reference could be to some single occurrence, in which case the recoverable meaning might be something like ši marra ‘some particular but unspecified recent time’. In the second, there may be a reference to some uncertainty about vaguely anticipated events, which have either already begun, may yet occur, or may not take place at all. In such questions, especially the first, ši seems to function as a tag, in the sense of ‘Did you call me, or not’? or ‘You called me, right?’13 and ‘Is there/ will there be anything happening today, or not’?14 In the final two, there being 13 The context here is a conversation by mobile telephone, meaning that it would have been evident from the telephone’s call log that a call had indeed been received. As such, a yes/no question is inappropriate, except as a rhetorical question intending something like ‘you called?’ marking a question anticipating a positive reply. 14 The utterance came in the midst of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011, a period of disquiet throughout the Arab world, when demonstrations were repeatedly being announced and just as often cancelled. On the

Polar interrogative ši

55

no recoverable referent, ši seems to be purely an interrogative marker of a polar yes/no question and nothing more, regardless of where it appears in the sentence. In this context, it is attested in Syrian (Cowell 1964/2005) and eastern Libya as well (Owens 1984): (3.10)

a. tʾūmt-i ažat min ʿand l-kawwa ši suit-my came from at the-ironer ši ‘Have my suits come from the cleaner’s?’ (Cowell 1964/2005: 378) b. sift ah·mad amis ši saw-you Ahmad yesterday ši ‘Did you see Ahmad yesterday?’ (Owens 1984: 102)

Owens also attests a similar yes/no type of question, here with the interrogative ši reduced to š, with Owens observing that this is ‘identical to the negative suffix’ (1984: 102),15 and suffixed immediately to the verb: (3.11)

šift-ū-š mih·ammad saw-you-š name ‘Did you see Mohammed?’

(Owens 1984: 102)

Tunisian Arabic shows this same alternation between ši and -š, with the -š being less common (Stumme 1896: 149; Gibson 2008: 570):16 (3.12)

a. ʿand-ak-ši flus/sarf ˙ at-you-ši money/change ‘Have you any money/change?’ b. šuf-t-ši lēla saw-you-ši name ‘Have you seen Layla?’

In all these questions, from (3.6) onwards, ši cannot be interpreted to mean ‘thing’. Instead, all share the quality of eliciting a polar reply from interlocutors, either ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

day this question was posed, demonstrations had been occurring all week, but none had been scheduled for that particular day. 15 To the contrary, Mitchell (1956: 50), also remarking upon its interrogative quality, states forthrightly that the suffix is ‘not to be confused with the -š of the negative’, adducing its use with the same verb ‘to see’: šuftiš dusēh ʿalmaktab? ‘Did you see a file on the desk?’ 16 Gibson (pers. comm., July 2012) is of the impression that the long form ši is more often used in interrogation to distinguish it from the suffixed š of negation.

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The functions of šī

3.7 Rhetorically negative ši Especially when associated with the pseudo-verb, the interrogative usage appears to be recruiting the partitive meaning of ši, insofar as it is evoking a subset of a larger class (c.f. Hirtle 1988: 467, 472): (3.13)

a. maʿa-k ši alf with-you ši thousand ‘Do you have [a] one thousand [note]?’ b. maʿ-ak ši xamsīn alf saraf ˙ with-you ši fifty thousand change ‘Do you have [some] fifty thousand in change?’

In such contexts, the indefinite determiner ši appears to acquire something of a polite hedge, such that what is meant appears to be, ‘Do you happen to have a one thousand note?’ and ‘Do you happen to have change for a fifty?’17 Here, too, the ši may move about, appearing immediately after the pseudo-verb or at the end of the utterance. It can also appear in both places, as in the following three similar queries, uttered over the course of a single conversation in a Syrian dialect of the Hōrān Plateau: ˙ (3.14) a. ʿand-ak ši qalam xatt-u ʿarīd ˙˙ ˙ at-you ši pen line-its wide ‘Do you have a wide-tipped pen?’ b. ʿand-ak qalam xatt-u ʿarīd ši ˙˙ ˙ at-you pen line-its wide ši ‘Do you have a wide-tipped pen?’ c. ʿand-ak ši qalam xatt-u ʿarīd ši ˙˙ ˙ at-you ši pen line-its wide ši ‘Do you have a wide-tipped pen?’ These might easily be interpreted to imply a certain negativity, the indefinite determiner perhaps serving as a tag, such that they might be read, ‘You don’t happen to have a wide-tipped pen about you, do you?’ Similarly, those in (3.6), (3.12a), and (3.13) might be read, ‘You haven’t any money/change, have you?’ and ‘You don’t happen to have 1,000/change for 50,000, do you?’ Badawi and Hinds (1986) see it working in exactly this way in an example from Egyptian Arabic:

The context here was respectively a cashier at a grocery store asking a customer for a 1,000 Lebanese lira note (’ $0.66) to avoid making change for a larger bill, and a man walking in the street asking a taxi driver if he had change for a 50,000-lira note (’ $33). 17

Negative ši (3.15)

57

ʿand-ak-ši sigāra at-you-ši cigarette ‘You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?’18 (Badawi and Hinds 1986: 449)

In such constructions, reanalysis has something with which to work, when such hedges are applied to avowedly negative questions. Accordingly, a recoverable original meaning is not ‘you don’t have a thing’ and ‘there is no thing’ but simply ‘have you any . . . ’ or ‘is there some . . . ’, with ši beginning to acquire negative connotations when occurring as part of a longer construction, often likely remaining an interrogative, with the pseudo-verb governing a true object: *mā ʿandak ši + [indefinite noun] ‘you don’t/ don’t you have any [entity]’ and *mā fī ši + [indefinite noun] ‘there is/is there not some [entity]’. In both their negative and non-negative casts, the expected answer to such questions would either be ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Such interrogative functions that were probably reanalysed as markers of negation, perhaps having a beginning in counterfactual alternates of questions like those considered here, wherein they begin to look much as they do in their current negative functioning: (3.16)

a. mā ʿand-ak ši flūs not at-you ši money ‘You don’t have any money?’ b. mā fī ši h·araka fi-d-dunyā not-there-is ši movement in-the-world ‘There is nothing happening anywhere?’

These look similar to an optional form in negation with the pseudo-verbs in which ši may be fully pronounced: mā ʿandakši and mā fīši.

3.8 Negative ši Viewing the origin of the negator as arising in a partitive or interrogative source solves a difficulty unacknowledged but nevertheless present in the underlying assumption: an unnecessary and (perhaps to speakers) unacceptable degree of redundancy is introduced by supposing a direct reanalysis of a word with a denotation of ‘thing’. The derivation, for example, of the commonly heard Egyptian expressions mā ʿandakš h·āga ‘you don’t have a thing’ and mā fīš h·āga ‘there is nothing’ or some Levantine variants mā ʿandakš iši and mā fīš iši, by such an analysis supposes earlier forms analysable as ‘you don’t have a thing a thing’ and ‘there is no 18 Mitchell (1956: 50) adduces almost the same question: ʿandakši sagāyir, which he glosses, ‘Have you any cigarettes?’

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The functions of šī

thing thing,’ whereas, supposing the function of ši to be as an indefinite determiner renders a more satisfactory parent form *mā ʿandak ši h·āga19 and *mā fī ši h·āga or *mā ʿandak ši iši and *mā fī ši iši to mean ‘you don’t have any sort of thing’ and ‘there is no such thing’. The same applies in verbal negation, wherein what is the likely parent form remains available as an alternate, for example, with the verb ‘to sleep’ nām/b-y-nām, adduced by many analysts. Davies (1981: 292) supposes of the Egyptian ma-nimt-ši di l-lēl that the full form ši, as opposed to a shorter enclitic -š, introduces a certain emphasis to mean ‘I haven’t slept at all tonight’. Harrell also notices the same phenomenon: ‘A slightly more emphatic negative is indicated by -šay instead of -š’ (1965/2010: 152), as does Caubet (1993b: 68), adducing the analogous phrase in the Moroccan: āna ma nāEǝs šäy ‘Moi! Mais je ne dors pas du tout!’ (Me! I’m not sleeping [i.e. sleepy] at all!).20 This being an intransitive verb, it makes less sense to assume that the underlying form here is ‘I didn’t sleep a thing’ than it does to view its negation as arising from a function of ši as an indefinite determiner, in such contexts functioning as an intensifier, rendering its denotation a more harmonious ‘I don’t get any sleep at all’. With transitive verbs, the difficulty is compounded: (3.17)

a. mā bit-kubb-iš iši not you-throw-š thing ‘You don’t throw out a thing’ b. mā-katab-t-eš h·āga not-wrote-you-š thing ‘I/you didn’t write a thing’ (Esseesy 2010: 66)

Under the common assumption, the underlying denotations of these, which presumably should have been recoverable at some stage of development, would be ‘you don’t throw away a thing a thing’ and ‘I/you didn’t write a thing a thing.’ Granted, in the usual course of events, as a word moved from lexical to grammatical, it would lose meaning, and eventually its relationship to its original denotation would become opaque. In the intervening steps, however, it is difficult to conceive how speakers might have tolerated such redundancy. Beginning the process from an indefinite determiner function for ši, however, neatly solves the problem. It was not a word with an original meaning of ‘thing’ that was reanalysed to become a marker of negation, instead an indefinite determiner or an interrogative was. The earlier manifestations

19 Phrases such as this were evidently spoken as late as the early 20th c. in Egypt without producing what Davies (1981: 277) calls ‘an implausible pleonasm’; Obler (1990: 138) attests ši h·āgˇa ‘something’ in Malta and North Africa; Caubet (1993a: 122, 124–5) specifically adduces ši h·āža sʿība ‘quelque chose de ˙ difficile’ (something difficult). Piamenta (1990: 273) documents iši h·āga for the Yemen. 20 We shall not concern ourselves with the vowel differences between šayʾ, šay, šēʾ, šī, and ši or with the presence of the glottal stop in two of them.

Distribution of ši

59

of such utterances in (3.17) would have been more like *mā bi-tkubb ši iši ‘you don’t throw out any thing at all’ and *mā-katabt ši h·āga ‘you didn’t write any such thing’.21

3.9 Distribution of ši To varying degrees, spoken vernaculars of Arabic in a contiguous area from Morocco to the Levant negate with -š, and possess indefinite determiner ši as a resource upon which to draw in its reanalysis as a negation marker, even those such as Egyptian Arabic, where its use has become restricted. Thus, we find that in Moroccan, possessing ši as an indefinite determiner, the -š is used in negating verbs, even if not obligatorily (Harrell 1965/2010: 156). Similarly, Algerian Arabic (at least of the Djidjelli and Tlemcen varieties) negates with -š (for which the alternate -ši also occurs) and utilizes the indefinite pronoun ši (W. Marçais 1902: 177, 187–90, 262 l. 28, 266 l. 9; P. Marçais 1952: 397, 592–601).22 So too do urban varieties of Tunisian Arabic regularly negate with -š, although negating without it is optional (Stumme 1896: 148; Ben Abdelkader et al. 1977: xxxi; Gibson 2008: 596).23 The same is true of Libyan Arabic (Owens 1984: 158–61).24 For its part, the -š of Egyptian Arabic negation is well known and hardly needs more comment,25 except to note that Abdel-Massih et al. (1979/2009: 136–7) can only be partially correct when they offer that the optional -ši arises for prosodic reasons alone, speculating that the ‘optional occurrence of -ši in sentence-final position after a consonant [or] after a long vowel may be the result of a tendency to generalize [regular prosody rules to the negative particle]’. This may be true, but were it simply a matter of prosody, we would expect to see the same rule applied to other words ending with -š, whereas we do not.26

Woidich (1990: 139–40) has already come to this conclusion: ‘It seems more plausible that the negated verb originally reinforced an associated object with this ši: *ma-katab ši-gawāb . . . *ma ʿandu ši-muftāh· . . . thence by restructuring . . . to the -š of negation.’ 22 As a negative particle, it varies by locality; in Tlemcen it appears regularly in verbal negation (W. Marçais 1902: 188), whereas in Djidjelli it is used for emphasis (P. Marçais 1952: 592); as an indefinite determiner it also means something like ‘such’ when used to express admiration, e.g. ʿándu ši drâfa ši fsâh·a, ˙ which W. Marçais (1902: 177) glosses: il a une telle courtoisie, une telle élégance de langage! (He˙has a certain courtesy, a certain elegance of language). Caubet (1993b: 123) observes the same quality in Moroccan ‘often functioning in exclamatory sentences’: ʿala bǝnt ! f-ši škǝl ! ‘Quelle fille! Elle est spéciale!’ (What a girl! She’s special!). 23 Mettouchi (1996: 184) summarizes negation in the Maghrebi dialects. Tunisian Arabic comes under closer scrutiny in Chapter 5. 24 Inland North African varieties often do not negate with -š (e.g. Taine-Cheikh 1995–6; Heath 2002: 7). 25 Woidich (1968) is an entire dissertation on the subject; the main points are summarized in Woidich (2006: 334–42). 26 That is, ‘in sentence medial position, -CŠ is replaced by -CŠi when the next word begins with a consonant . . . most speakers [also] replace -VVŠ by -VŠ before a word which begins with a consonant, and some replace -VVŠ by -VVŠi in the same position; it is usually the latter group of speakers who use -VVŠi in sentence final position’ (Abdel-Massih et al. 2009: 136–7). According to this analysis, we would expect 21

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The functions of šī

Something like an indefinite determiner in the form of iši also occurs in Egyptian Arabic and may have been more productive earlier. That it is preserved in folk sayings, which often retain archaic forms, indicates that it was. For example, Badawi and Hinds (1986: 25) adduce xušš bi-iši tibʾa iši xušš balāš tibʾa walāš ‘come in with something, you’ll be something; come in with nothing, you’ll be nothing’.27 Nowadays, however, it occurs only in enumerating a series—a partitive function if ever there was one—but it is nevertheless almost entirely devoid of any concrete meaning, even while adding dimension to the utterance in which it appears, as in the following, adduced by Badawi and Hinds:28 (3.18) ʿand-u mimma gamīʿ-u iši gibna w iši zatūn w iši sardine at-he among all-it iši cheese and iši olives and iši sardines ma-t-ʿidd-iš don’t you-count ‘He has something of everything: cheese, olives, sardines; what have you’ (Badawi and Hinds 1986: 25)29 For the adjacent dialect areas in Palestine and Syria, where an indefinite determiner ši is well attested, Cowell states: The most common negative particles are mā, used mainly in verbs and a few other exceptions, and mū, used with non-verbal predicates . . . Commonly in Palestine and to a lesser extent in southern and central Lebanon, mā is paired with a suffix -š which is attached to the negated term. (Cowell 1964/2005: 383)

Thackston provides further detail: An optional alternative negative suffix -š (actually characteristic of Palestinian Arabic but often heard in the Lebanon) may be added to all verbs and quasi-verbs (bidd-, ʿind-) that are negated with ma. With the -š suffix the negative ma is optional. (Thackston 1996: 145)

utterance-medial and utterance-final forms such as *darši (from darš, a nickname for Mustafa) and *il-kornīši (the Corniche), but such things do not occur. Lucas (2010: 183, n. 17) asserts that because in modern Egyptian Arabic iši is ‘restricted to contexts where a number of items are listed . . . there is no strong evidence to suggest’ that a quantifier ši ever existed in Egyptian Arabic. He is forgetting an established principle of historical linguistics that rarities and anomalies are often the last vestiges of former productive processes within a language (Meillet 1967: 41–2). What is more, contrary to his assertion, Davies (1981: 269–88) provides persuasive evidence that ši ‘was not formerly so restricted, but was an indigenous member of the lexicon’, demonstrating its multiple functions, including that as a quantifier. 28 It also occurs in other formulaic utterances like the iši iši . . . used in initiating riddles or the exclamation išši išš!, meaning something like ‘how nice’, both probably having their origins in a reflex of interrogative aš, perhaps iš hi ‘what is she/it’ and iššu ‘what is he/it’, those being attested in other living (and extinct) varieties of Arabic. 29 Davies (1981: 274) adduces an almost identical phrase: il-baʾʾāl ʿand-u iši zatūn wi-ši gibna wi-ši turši ˙ in ‘the grocer has (some quantities of) olives, cheese, and pickles’. Badawi and Hinds leave iši untranslated their gloss. 27

Distribution of ši

61

He adduces examples of verbal negations in the indicative, (ma) biftikirš ‘I don’t think so’; perfect, (ma) kuntiš ‘I wasn’t’; and the prohibitive (ma) tih·sabnīš ‘don’t count me’, the parentheses showing that the verb may be negated with or without ma; and he attests constructions like biddīš ‘I don’t want’ and ʿindināš ‘we don’t have and fīš ‘there isn’t’, all possible without ma.30 Cowell (1964/2005: 383) also notes this type of negation with the same verb: ‘Commonly in Palestine and to a lesser extent in southern and central Lebanon . . . in some dialects, -š may be used without mā, or with ʾa- instead of mā. Thus mā baʿref ‘I don’t know’ = mā baʿref-š = baʿref-š = ʾa-baʿref-š.’ Providing a more fine-grained analysis of Lebanese varieties, Fleisch (1974: 349, 353), who documents regional usages throughout the country, concurs that the -š marker is generally not used in northern Lebanon and is distasteful to Beirutis. On the other hand, he too finds it in some areas of the Beirut hinterlands with the particle ʾa-, not mā, preceding: (3.19) a. ʾa-baʿref š b. ʾa-bh·ǝbbūš

I don’t know (Fleisch 1974: 128, 194, l. 22) I don’t like it/him (1974: 210–11)

He also documents similar usage with the pseudo-verb fī: (3.20) ʾafiš mǝna fakke

there is no escape from it (1974: 163, l. 9)

Behnstedt (1997: 450–51, map 225) and Behnstedt and Woidich (2005: 101, map 32) show negation with ma- and ʾa- occurring (without š) as alternates in all of northern Lebanon, all the way up the Syrian coast, and inland almost as far as Hama, while in the mountain hinterlands of Beirut, negation with ʾa (with and without -š) is common (see fig. 7.3).31 Palva (2004: 227, 231) documents it as an alternate as far away as the Jordanian city of Salt northwest of Amman. Bauer (1926: 122) adduces it for ˙ Palestine. Regardless of Beirutis’ reception of negation with -š, it nevertheless does occur in Beirut, where many (perhaps all) of the local Lebanese vernaculars reside together (along with many Palestinian and Syrian varieties, which are indeed stigmatized to some degree; cf. Germanos 2007; Hennessey 2011). Such variability is to be expected

30 It is intriguing that Thackston admits the possibility in Lebanon (especially amongst Palestinian speakers) of negation with post-positive -š in the perfect and in the pseudo-verb ʿand. Similarly, for the dialect of Bet Safafa in Palestine proper, Obler (1975: 107) says that ʿand negated with and without mā is in free variation, without however attesting any examples. She also attests the post-positive negation of past tense verbs without mā, notably with the verb ‘to be’ kān (p. 109). Khairallah (2014) attests negation with ʾa . . . š and post-positive -š alone in a dialect of the Keserwan district of Lebanon in past and present tenses and with pseudo-verbs. Meanwhile, Lucas (2010) finds great significance in the agrammaticality of both constructions amongst his informants in occupied Palestine. Bauer (1926: 123, n. 5) seems to attest a postpositively negated ʿand in Palestinian varieties of his day, and of course it remains in use in Egyptian Arabic, as seen above (3.15). 31 I have recently overheard a very Beiruti-looking young man (about 16) talking amongst his peers saying a-baddi ‘I don’t want [to].’

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The functions of šī

of a capital city, where people from all parts of the country congregate. What is more, negation with ʾa- is sufficiently prominent to be featured in humorous treatments on local television, perhaps because it lends a certain authenticity by marking the speaker as originating in the Beirut hinterlands, where many of Fleisch’s samples were collected. For example, an ad campaign about a new brand of locally manufactured ice cream confections introduced in spring 2011 features a character named ‘Jay Jay’ (Germanous Germanous), recently returned to his natal village after long years living in America, who flogs the product, saying this: (3.21)

amīrka cornelli a-fī-š32 America brand a-in-š ‘In America there is no Cornelli [ice cream]’

Likewise, a political satire programme featuring a range of stereotypical Beirut types exploits a running gag featuring a malcontent named Saʿīd (whose name means ‘happy’), who always ends his routine with this punchline: (3.22) a-fiš-ši byu-bsut ya xayy-i33 ˙ a-in-š-thing it-pleases O brother-mine ‘There’s nothing to be happy about, brother’ Various researchers (Feghali 1928: 221; Blau 1960: 193–8; Abu-Haidar 1979: 110; Hoyt 2007: 116–17; 2010: 96; Lucas 2010; Alqassas 2012: 84) have remarked upon the phenomenon, supposing that this ʾa is a reduction of the negative mā in indicative verbs preceded by the aspectual prefix b- and in pseudo-verbs beginning with a labial consonant, such as fī and bidd-. Others (Palva 2004: 227; Obler 1975: 106) point out that there must be more to it than simply phonological conditioning, for it can appear with prohibitives, those, of course, beginning with the 2nd person prefix t-, a coronal consonant. A 2011 skit from the political satire programme displays this type of negation in all three of these possibilities: with prohibitives, pseudo-verbs, and indicative verbs bearing the b- prefix:34 32 The advertisement (and others in the campaign, of which this is first) can be viewed on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwA6hza_ZH4. The statement amīrka cornelli ʾafīš occurs at 0.19. In others of the series he also uses the technique with verbs, viz: a-biysuʾš ‘he doesn’t drive’ and a-biyimšuš ‘they don’t go’, and with a-biylaʾ lūš ‘he doesn’t find for himself ’. He also uses the interrogative aš ‘what’ in aš tiʾūl ‘what do you say’? (cf. Fleisch 1974: 132, 159, 168, 229, 248). We shall revisit aš below. 33 A repeated iteration of Saʿīd’s splenetic pronouncement may be heard here: http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=uvu0aQmzyBU. The vowel reduction appears to arise from the phonological environment. The gemination of -š must arise from the juxtaposition of the negative -š and the word for thing ši. Blanc (1953: 102, 103) documents vowel reduction and gemination of š in both ma-fišš and fišš in other environments. I have heard a-fišš in Amman along with variants ma-fišši and fišši. Obler (1975: 105) says that fišš is the more common form in her data. 34 See the skit from which the examples are drawn here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= I31hGuT0W-Q.

Conclusion (3.23)

63

a. a-tu-ntiri-nī-š ˙ a-you-await-me-š ‘Don’t wait around for me’ b. a-bidd-i-šš yā-ki35 a-desire-my-š yā-you ‘I don’t want you’ c. a-btiʿdilī-š a-you-adjust-š ‘You aren’t acting right’

3.10 Conclusion A review of some salient features of reflexes of /š/ as they appear as indefinite determiners, interrogatives, and negators in Arabic dialects permits us to form a new conceptualization of their function, leading inevitably to a reconsideration of their origins. Whatever those turn out to be, they are not likely to be FA. The possible motivations for the reanalysis of words formed with /š/ as the negative marker -š are recoverable from within the spoken vernaculars of Arabic but are completely absent in FA. Reconstruction thus cannot depend upon positing an origin in FA. Rather, forcing negation with reflexes of ši into an FA origin obscures the steps of the process. Worse, proposing FA as the origin—an explanation no better than a folk etymology—occasions false leads and permits the posing of spurious analogies, notably claims as to the similarity of Arabic negation with mā . . . š to French negations with ne . . . pas and Jespersen’s Cycle. It is possible that some kind of cycle may have operated in spoken Arabic independently of developments in Arabic writing—if any were to operate at all, it would have to be in speech—resulting in the various manifestations of negation with -š. We shall revisit that eventuality in Chapter 7. Meanwhile, that many spoken Arabic varieties use a post-positive -š in polar interrogatives like šuft-š (‘Have you seen . . . ?’) without the characteristic mā of negation raises the possibility of a causal linkage between negation with -š and the pervasive tendency of Arabic vernaculars to form interrogatives with reflexes of /š/. Indeed, some tantalizing evidence for such interrogatives and even occasionally such negative expressions does appear in the historical record of non-canonical Arabic writing. We now turn to a close examination of the sources, beginning with consideration of the earliest textual attestations of negators and indefinites formed with an enclitic -š, the earliest unambiguous instances of those found in writings from the Arab civilization in the Iberian Peninsula (al-Andalus) in which elements of vernacular Arabic appear to varying degrees of saturation. 35

Notice the vowel reduction and gemination of š, here obviously not meaning ‘I don’t want a thing’.

4 Andalusi Arabic negators and interrogatives Early evidence of grammatical ši Early textual representations of speech—while patently not spoken and clearly incapable of imparting a complete picture of the speech of their day1—constitute the sole indication of what spoken Arabic may have been like in the early centuries before and after the spread of Islam. Hindering the analysis is that, unlike the rich documentation of FA in texts dating from the 2nd/8th century forward, becoming exceedingly rich with the passage of time, no written evidence exists of vernacular Arabic until after the advent of Islam, aside from some pre-Islamic epigraphic Arabic writing, those providing tantalizing clues but little more. The epigraphic writing, ably addressed in Al-Jallad (2012), in itself constitutes good reason for concluding that independent Arabic varieties not derived from FA were well established in the Fertile Crescent in the centuries before the advent of Islam (considered in Chapter 6). Aside from the epigraphic sources, attestation of vernacular varieties of Arabic does not become available until the first centuries after the spread of Arabic-speaking Muslims outside the Arab homeland in the 1st/7th century. Some of the earliest evidence of any sort of non-canonical Arabic writing, furnishing a clue to the nature of spoken Arabic of the day, comes in the form of Arabic papyri dating to before the 3rd century ah (10th ad), ‘which represent but one (albeit the most important) class of documentary material which has survived from the early centuries of Islam’ (Hopkins 1984: xl). The nature of much of the ‘material is of a documentary character, represented by business and private letters, legal deeds, marriage contracts, administrative surveys, economic lists and registers, passports, petitions, tax receipts, demands for payment, etc.’ (Hopkins 1984: xlii). These are the very types of material linguists should be 1 Mejdell (2012: 244) is stating the obvious (which must nevertheless always be borne in mind) when she writes that ‘graphic and phonetic representations yield different information’; written texts can only impart ‘syntactic, collocational, and lexical aspects [of vernacular speech] which are transparent in both speech and writing’.

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including in their assessments of modern written Arabic, and it is a great boon that such documents of so early an age are available, for, as Hopkins further remarks: Whereas a great deal of CA [Classical Arabic] literature has been edited, revisited and embellished for the edification of posterity, copied and recopied to satisfy a constant demand, and is available only in comparatively late MSS., the papyri represent a corpus of original documents. With the possible exception of some of the literary papyri, none of this material has been rewritten or recopied and may therefore be accepted without misgivings as directly representative of the Arabic language at the time at which it was written, free from later editorial interference of any kind. Indeed, the practical day-to-day nature of most of the extant texts precludes the need for any such activity, and herein lies a second important advantage. Most of the CA sources belong to the genres of poetry and ornate prose, surely very far removed from the Old Arabic usus loquendi, which may be thought much more likely to be reflected in . . . the large number of business and private letters, many of which represent fine examples of early vernacular Arabic. (Hopkins 1984: xliii, his emphasis)

These documents provide an indirect clue to what the state of the language must have been before its speakers adopted a fully standardized writing system, their writing presumably reflecting some aspects of their speech. An instance of what appears to be a colloquialism demonstrating a use of a reflex of ši as an indefinite determiner occurs in a 4th/10th-century papyrus held in the Egyptian Library in Cairo: (4.1) w twb šy gˇdyd2 and garment šy new ‘and a garment, a new one’ (Hopkins 1984: 67) Hopkins cannot be sure that this is truly an early instance of the ‘šay + undefined noun construction common in so many colloquials as an expression of the indefinite’ (Hopkins 1984: 67). It certainly appears to be; and an analogous construction with an indefinite determiner preceding an adjective can be found five centuries later in a text from Egypt of Ibn Sūdūn (810/1407–868/1464): (4.2) nxyl šy t· awyl w ši qsyr ˙ palms trees ši tall and ši short ‘palm trees, some tall and some short’ (Vrolijk 1998: 138, 13) Hopkins also documents ‘what may perhaps be šay assuming the function of a negative particle’ (Hopkins 1984: 152) in the Jāmiʿ of Ibn Wahb (d. 197/813), a collection of prophetic h·adīt:

2 As these examples are taken from written documents, we cannot be sure of pronunciation; hence the depicting of the text in transliteration rather than a transcription.

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(4.3) qāl mn ʿamly šy awtq ʿndy mn . . . he said among my work šy most reliable with me amongst ‘He said, “no deeds of mine inspire more confidence in me than . . . ” ’ (Hopkins 1984: 152) Here again, Hopkins is unsure whether this is ‘a scribal omission or a genuine example of negative šay’ (p. 152). Of the vernacular features in such writing, Hopkins (p. xxxviii) observes: ‘the two longest Arabic texts on papyrus [among which is] Ibn Wahb’s Jāmiʿ from the late 3rd century A.H. are both written in a type of language which very often deviates from CA.’ From Ibn Wahb’s Jāmiʿ, otherwise ‘basically written in the CA variety of h·adīt’, Blau enumerates ‘a few, but quite conspicuous, [vernacular Arabic] features’, including ‘the use of ʾabū, etc., contrary to the rules of CA, the occasional lack of the alif of the accusative, the supersession of the dual by the plural’ (2002: 62). Writing such as this provides an opening onto an early period of Arabic in which the strictures of classical composition had not yet taken firm hold on the imaginations of writers who, perhaps unwittingly, admitted into their texts (even with such solemn subjects as the words and deeds of the prophet of Islam) elements of their spoken usage that would later become stigmatized as substandard.

4.1 Indefinite and negative ši in Andalusi Arabic As tantalizing as it is, this early evidence is inconclusive, and even if it were less ambiguous, it could not by itself decide the question of origins one way or the other but could merely demonstrate that ši as an indefinite determiner was perhaps in use in 4th/ 10th-century Cairo, as perhaps some form of negative -š was 100 years previously. Unequivocal textual support for ši as an indefinite determiner and -š as a negator in spoken Arabic is not forthcoming until several centuries later in documents from Arab Spain (al-Andalus), and even there the evidence is patchy. The earliest representations of the spoken Arabic of al-Andalus begin to appear in isolated quotations from prose and poetry in documents dating from about a century after Hopkins’ papyri, i.e. the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries. The documentation becoming richer from the 5th/11th to the 11th/17th centuries, the number and quality of known manuscripts makes the Andalusi the best documented of any medieval Arabic dialects (Corriente 2006: 102; Vicente 2011: 190–93). Echoing Hopkins’ view of early papyri, Corriente regards these documents as providing insight into the Arabic that was spoken before the spread of Arabic outside the Arabian Peninsula: Spanish Arabic is of enormous interest to Arabic dialectologists, being the earliest dialect from which we possess a sizeable body of information and also standing close enough to the Old Arabic ingredients to allow us to see how the modern dialects are not the offspring of CA nor, as a whole, of any post-Islamic koine, but are the result of OA stock. (Corriente 1977: 8)

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As with earlier papyri, so with these later documents the evidence is sparse, and it is often difficult to obtain a complete picture of the underlying matrix language in the context of which they were written. This is more true with some aspects of the language than others; notably the syntactic material is, as Corriente laments, ‘insufficient, and we must confess our inability to draw much more than this in the present stage of information and elaboration of the materials’ (1977: 8). The best that can be attempted is to extrapolate from what is known of it and other related contemporary regional vernaculars and their modern descendants in order to reconstruct what Andalusi dialects of Arabic must have been like. For all that, the Andalusi record provides documentation of some aspects of the Arabic spoken in the Iberian Peninsula in the innovative poetry of Ibero-Arab culture: zajal (pl. azjāl), a genre that broke with the rigid strictures of classical Arabic poetry by (among other ways) admitting colloquial language into its composition.3 The foremost exponent of this art was the Andalusi zajjāl (i.e. composer of azjāl) Ibn Quzmān (d. 554/1160), upon whose collection, or dīwān, Corriente relies much (1977; 1997a); and although ši as an indefinite determiner or negator does not appear in Ibn Quzmān, it does in a text from 100 years later in the dīwān of another Andalusi zajjāl, the renowned Granadan Sufi poet al-Šuštarī (d. 668/1269):4 (4.4) in kān maʿ-k-šy bidāʿa anfiq-hā bayna l-milāh· ˙ if were with-you-ši goods distribute-her between the-good5 ‘If you have any goods, distribute them amongst the good’ (ed. Al-Nashar, 1960: 357, zajal 11/4) The ši in maʿkši appears to be an indefinite determiner. In another of its appearances in al-Šuštarī’s dīwān, its status is ambiguous; in context, it could either be an indefinite determiner or a negator:

3 This despite J. Abu-Haidar’s (1977) curious assertion that the language of zajal is not colloquial Arabic, by which he appears to mean that it is not entirely colloquial. In that, he is surely correct. He rightly asks how it could be considered entirely colloquial given the numerous uses of the accusative case and other classicisms in such poetry. For a view conflicting with that of Abu-Haidar, see Larkin (2006), who argues persuasively that zajjāl Ibn Quzmān’s poetry is markedly colloquial in tone. Vicente appears to wish to maintain that it is purely colloquial when she says that it is ‘entirely written in Andalusi Arabic’ (2011: 191). Insofar as any writing produced in Arab Iberia is Andalusi, regardless of register, this is true; but if the language were pure colloquial, the genre’s many classicizing features would not appear. Abu-Haidar is perspicuous enough to admit that the language of the zajal is a mixed form. That much is clearly evident from a reading of any Andalusi zajjāl; to varying degrees, theirs is a literary genre that admits colloquialisms into its composition. For that very reason, a complete grammar of the Andalusi dialects remains out of reach. 4 For a short biography of al-Šuštarī, see Fierro (1997); for longer ones, see Massignon (1950) and alNashar’s edn of 1960. 5 Sing. mlīh·, lit. ‘salty’ or by extension ‘pleasant’. In modern spoken varieties where this appears, this and its counterpart mnīh· (pl. mnāh·) mean ‘well, good’.

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FIG. 4.1 Affixed -ši in two stanzas of al-Našar’s al-Šuštarī

(4.5) qul-hā rislan bissiyāh· las-la-k-šy tāny ˙˙ say-her/it gently aloud not-to-you-ši second ‘Speak it slowly, aloud; you haven’t another/you haven’t any other’ (ed. Al-Nashar, 1960: 263, zajal 79/1) In both these instances, the {šy} is affixed directly to the preceding word such that the whole construction forms a single orthographic unit (shown in Fig. 4.1). As such, the {ši} in maʿkši, which might otherwise be interpreted as a negator, were it not for its rendering an incongruous meaning as such—‘if you don’t have goods, distribute them . . . ’, from its context appears clearly to be an indefinite determiner. In the second, while the characteristically Andalusi rendering {las}, a reflex of the negator /laysa/ ‘not’, renders the phrase laslakši unambiguously negative ‘you have not’, it is nevertheless unclear that the affixed {ši} is participating in the negation as well, or whether it is functioning as an indefinite determiner meaning ‘some’ or ‘any’, analogous to its function in modern Arabic vernaculars. In a third instance, however, -ši is unambiguously a negator: (4.6) ta-ltafit li-nafsa-k fī bah·r ʿilm-ak idā tarak-t gˇism-ak lā you-attend to-self-your in sea knowledge-your if left-you body-your not ti-nqasim-ši ant hu-dāka qism-ak you-divided-ši you it-that destiny-your ‘Look inward in the sea of your knowledge, if you left your body, be not divided, that is your destiny’ (ed. Al-Nashar, 1960: 238, zajal 68/11) As is often the case with Andalusi Arabic writings, some constructions, while comprehensible, are nevertheless idiosyncratic for various reasons, including their orthography. Amongst these is the rendering of the written Arabic negator laysa as {las};6 another in this stanza is the curious hudāka, resembling the familiar remote-deixis demonstrative hunāka, here rendered all the more curious by its spelling, with the {hu} detached from the rest of the word: { } (see Fig. 4.2). This becomes crucial to the 6

This may be a southern peninsular feature brought to al-Andalus. It is found in a modern variety of the Tihāma, the coastal area, beginning south of modern Jeddah and extending into the Yemen; the Abha dialect of the Tihāma negates verbs with lis (al-Azraqi 1998: 141–4).

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discussion below. Unusual, too, for modern spoken Arabic is the poet’s use of the prohibitive lā with a corresponding enclitic negator -š, which nowadays would (depending upon the dialect) usually take mā, the lā where it is used usually appearing without -š.7 Typically modern usage comes with a later Andalusi poet, another Granadan Ibn Zamrak (d. 795/1393), whose poetry is immortalized on the walls of La Alhambra (de la Granja 1979): (4.7)

mā ti-xāf-ši an na-štakī-k8 not you-fear-ši that I-complain-you ‘¿No temes que me querelle . . . ?’ (Corriente 1990: 9, 24, zajal 8/7/1) (Are you not afraid that I might complain of you?)

(4.8)

mā ta-rī-ši kif asbah· al-ʾat· yār fī manābir min aġsān al-ašgˇār ˙ ˙ not you-see-ši how become the-birds in pulpits from branches the-trees ‘¿No ves cómo están las aves sentadas en verdes ramas . . . ?’ (Corriente 1990: 14 and 28, zajal 13/1/1) (Do you not see how the birds have come to their leafy pulpits?)9

In a text roughly contemporary with that of Ibn Zamrak and another dated somewhat later are what appear to be instances of negation with post-positive -š without a preposed mā; these are similar to forms documented in the Omani Arabic of the late 19th-century copular negators enā-ši ‘not I’ and huwa-ši ‘not he’ (Reinhardt 1894: 21–2). The first of these comes from a xarja of Ibn Xātima (d. 771/1369),10 who was born in Almeria but came to prominence in Granada (Gibert 1979): (4.9)

qal-li man rā-k wa lis min asrā-k said-to-me who saw-you and not among captives-your mr ayyāk yā nāzir ayyāk anīš n-adri ˙ pass beware O looker beware, I-not I-know ‘Pocos son los que te ven y no quedan tus prisioneros Vete, cuidado, tú que miras, ¡cuidado! Yo nada sé’ (Corriente 1987: 222; 1997b: 174) (‘He said to me, few have seen you and have not been captivated. Go, but beware, you who look, beware. I know nothing’)

In some modern dialects the -š may appear: e.g. Cantineau reports that in the Syrian Hōrān the -š is ˙ optional with a prohibitive formed with lā (Cantineau 1940–46: 389). 8 For discussion of the n- of the 1st person singular indicative, see Owens (2003). 9 Corriente (1997a: 297) renders this ‘you do not see’. 10 Another genre of Andalusi poetry, the xarjas (Ar. ‘exit’; pl. xarajāt), comprised two stanzas of largely colloquial Arabic poetry, an admixture of Arabic and Romance, or entirely in Romance (or Hebrew), added by way of culminating (as it were, ‘the exit’) longer poems composed in FA called muwaššah·āt (Monroe 1977; 1989; Zwartjes 1997). 7

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Andalusi Arabic negators and interrogatives a: hudāka in Al-Nashar’s Šuštarī

b: anīš and anāš in al-Dāya’s Ibn Xātima

c: huwāš in al-Ahwānī’s Ibn Āsim

FIG. 4.2 Orthography of pronouns in three Andalusi works

Corriente transliterates this aní+š, but the Arabic text shows the unusual {‫}ﺃﻥ ﺍﺵ‬. In his 1972 edition of Ibn Xātima, al-Dāya transcribes the letter nūn {n} with a kasra {i}, apparently interpreting the spelling to be something like Corriente’s aní+š; in his 1994 edition, however, he has reinterpreted the word to read without a short vowel, yielding anāš. In a slightly later text, a proverb collection of Ibn ʿĀsim (d. 829/1425), ˙ another Granadan (Schacht 1979), the same sort of copular construction appears: ʿaly-ya wa hu aš yi-ġat· t· i rgˇlay-ya name-his on-me and it not it-covers legs-mine ‘His name is on me and it does not cover my legs’11 (ed. al-Ahwānī, 1962: 314, proverb 226)

(4.10) ism-u

Here, too, the spelling of the Arabic is peculiar; characteristic of the unorthodox spelling of al-Šuštarī, it shows the 3rd person pronoun as hu {‫( } ُﻩ‬instead of the usual huwa {‫)}ﻫﻮ‬, yielding what looks like huwāš {‫} ُﻩ ﺍﺵ‬. The two versions of the xarja of Ibn Xātima and the proverb of Ibn ʿĀsim appear in Fig. 4.2. ˙

4.2 A Jespersen’s Cycle? In her painstaking 1994 study of the proverb collection of Ibn ʿĀsim, Marugán ˙ transliterates the clause of the proverb in (4.10) as hú íš yiġat··ti rijláy (1994: 83), 11 The opacity of this cryptic maxim is rendered transparent in Westermarck and El-Baqqali’s 1930 collection from modern Morocco, where a similar proverb appears (their no. 725, pp. 160, 361), there it being the ears covered rather than the legs. About this, Westermarck and El-Baqqali, who helpfully elucidate the context of each of their proverbs, explain, ‘an employee who has a wealthy master, and therefore is supposed to earn much money, denies this by saying: šenáʿtu ʿaliyya ma ġat··tat wudniyya “His fame has not covered for me [even] my ears” ’ (1930: 160). What is probably meant by šenáʿ is sumʿa ‘name, repute’.

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which she glosses ‘no llega a mis pies’ (it does not reach to my feet). When it is considered that a 19th-century analogue exists in Omani Arabic as attested in Reinhardt (1894: 282) huwa-ši sekrān ‘nicht er ist betrunken’ (he is not drunk), it appears that Marugán may be justified in viewing the Andalusi construction huwāš yiġat··ti as a negative, but, as we shall see, not for the reason she gives. Here and elsewhere, Marugán views the {‫ }ﺍﺵ‬in hu aš as forming an independent word iš that acts as a negator (1991: 260–1; 1994: 63), evidently also viewing the pronoun hú as independent. She may be justified in the latter, for it does indeed often appear independently as {‫ } ُﻩ‬in al-Šuštarī and elsewhere, but she is less justified in the former, although she is not alone in viewing the word in this way. She surely takes her interpretation from Corriente, whose student she is, reduplicating Corriente’s understanding of the word iš as a negator. In his pioneering treatise on Andalusi Arabic, A Grammatical Sketch of the Spanish Arabic Dialect Bundle (1977: 145), Corriente sees the word as undergoing a change from an interrogative aš to become a negator in later Andalusi Arabic texts—notably, it seems, those later texts mostly written by non-native speakers of Arabic. This is no trivial matter, for some of the most recent work to address the technique of negating with post-positive -š, drawing upon Corriente’s interpretation of the word, makes much out of a supposed preposed negative iš. In the first of a series of papers amounting to the most ambitious treatment of the phenomenon of negation with post-positive -š in a generation, Lucas (2007) presents a strong argument for the operation of a Jespersen’s Cycle in Arabic, basing part of his argument on the assumption that Andalusi Arabic ‘appears to have entirely lacked a stage II construction’ (p. 414); that is, according to Lucas, Andalusi Arabic never arrived at a stage at which it negated with mā . . . š. Lucas and Lash (2010) reassert that position, claiming that in the vernacular Arabic reflected in texts surviving from al-Andalus ‘there is no sign of a . . . negative construction [formed with -š]’ (Lucas and Lash 2010: 386). As we have seen, there patently is sign of it.12 Indeed, in their similarity to the Omani forms, the anīš or anāš and huwāš of the Andalusi Arabic look to be manifestations of the terminal phase of the Jespersen’s Cycle, or stage III as Lucas (2007: 399) outlines it. This obliges us to diverge momentarily to consider the nature of the putative negator iš, for if, on one hand, the anāš and huwāš of (4.9) and (4.10) are truly 12 The recent publication A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Andalusi Arabic, its authorship credited only as the Islamic Studies of the University of Zaragoza, but evidently primarily the work of Corriente, flatly contradicts the assertions of Lucas and Lash: ‘As for the complementary marker of negation š(ī), so characteristic of North African Arabic, Ml, and Egyptian, its witnesses in AA are either scarce . . . or insecure . . . however, the late examples of IA [Ibn ʿĀsim] . . . and IZ [Ibn Zamrak] . . . suggest ˙ that this feature might have penetrated the low registers of late Granadan, or even have been always extant in the lowest and most repressed registers of AA’ (2013: 128). Lucas and Lash are remiss in their failure to credit Corriente’s adducing al-Šuštarī in his A Grammatical Sketch of the Spanish Arabic Dialect Bundle (1977: 143–4, n. 236), the sole work about Andalusi Arabic that they cite. Had they consulted his later Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic (1997a: 297), they would have found him adducing Ibn Zamrak as well.

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negative copulae of the Omani type, this shows some evidence of a stage III of a Jespersen’s Cycle having operated in Andalusi Arabic. If, on the other hand, they can be deconstructed as involving the canonical independent Arabic pronouns anā and huwa ‘I’ and ‘he’ respectively negated with an erstwhile interrogative aš, as Corriente and his students maintain—that is, the interrogative itself that has undergone reanalysis as a negator—we may tentatively conclude that it has not arrived at that status having first undergone the cyclic reanalysis of a Jespersen’s Cycle. A third possibility, hitherto never considered, is that reflexes of Vš remain interrogatives, and that those two curiously configured ‘negators’ are actually interrogatives. This third possibility provides a link between interrogation with reflexes of /š/ and negation with -š. This is developed in Chapter 5; for now, we must turn our attention to the nature of this putative negator itself.

4.3 Interrogative or negative iš? The assertion that preposed iš is a negator implies that this is a local Andalusi development: that the Vš interrogative of any other Arabic variety in which one of its reflexes is attested has in Andalusi become a negator. This further implies that while the undoubtedly related negative marker -š generally appears as an enclitic in all varieties where it functions as such, in Andalusi Arabic it has moved round to the front of the word. These two implications begin to appear implausible when it is considered that interrogative aš and negative -š operate in the conventional manner in contemporary Moroccan (Harrell 1965/2010: 144, 152–6; Caubet 1993 passim; 1996), the variety manifestly most closely related to Andalusi Arabic (Vicente 2010; 2011), and other North African varieties of Arabic, probably also closely related. Consider the single example of Andalusi Arabic that Lucas (2007: 411) and Lucas and Lash (2010: 386) cite from Corriente (1977: 145), a proverb from al-Zajjālī: al-wasiyya [fa- d-damġa r-radiyya]13 ˙ iš it/she-of.value the-advice and the-brain the-destroyed ‘Advice is useless to a fool’

(4.11) iš ta-nfaʿ

It appears that the source of Corriente’s own reading of the text comes in an explanatory footnote to the proverb, in which editor Bencherifa says, without providing any justification, ‘iš with a kasra [the diacritic for /i/] below the hamza [the place marker for the vowel, i.e., {‫ ]}ﺀ‬for negation’ (al-Zajjālī, ed. Bencherifa 1971: 30). As it happens, this is the second of only three instances in Bencherifa’s edition of al-Zajjālī where a reflex of aš is rendered without a short vowel, even being written without the hamza (the symbol for the glottal stop) that might at least have given a 13 Neither Lucas (2007) nor Lucas and Lash (2010), nor for that matter Corriente (1977) or (1997a), adduce the complete proverb (see Fig. 4.3).

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FIG. 4.3 Proverbs 103, 112, 113, and 269 of Bencherifa’s al-Zajjālī showing vowel placement with ‫ﺍﺵ‬

hint about where the vowel should be placed. The final one is the proverb immediately succeeding the one cited by Lucas and Lash: (4.12) iš

ta-nfaʿ al-ʿabsa wa l-diyāf qad h·allū ˙ what it/she.profits the-frivolity and the-guests have left ‘What good is mucking about after the guests have gone?’

Yet, as Bencherifa has not actually transcribed a short vowel (or for that matter a hamza), it remains unclear why he might view this as iš, going on to interpret it as a negator, and not as the usual interrogative aš. In proverb 269 (ed. Bencherifa 1971: 65), the same formula, aš tanfaʿ ‘of what use?’, appears, there written with the hamza in such a way as to indicate that it is to be pronounced aš and interpreted as an interrogative:14 aš tanfaʿ il-tabāxir wa-l-dāmin dāxil ‘What use is the wafting of incense, when there is manure inside?’ What is more, here, in another footnote, Bencherifa refers to yet another footnote, that of proverb 266 on the previous page, where aš also appears, there with the interrogative actually affixed to the following word, obliging him to explain it as ‘aš li-l-istifhām’, i.e. ‘the aš of interrogation’. Indeed, in only one instance does a vowel appear below the alif, there of course reading iš but interpretable as an interrogative implying a negative: ‘What in the bribe can be measured?’ to which the answer would be ‘Nothing’.15 Bencherifa’s reasoning about iš as a negator in proverb 112 thus seems unjustified.16 The proverbs are shown in Fig. 4.3. Beyond that, al-Zajjālī’s sentiment in proverb 113 (shown in 4.12) is anticipated in a verse of Ibn Quzmān (d. 554/1160). In her 1999 edition of the dīwān of Ibn As it happens, this is the second to last of only fifteen proverbs in the collection in which the interrogative aš appears, all but four of them with a hamza transcribed atop the alif, in seven of which the short vowel fath·a {a} also appears. 15 Bencherifa interprets this: ‘Apparently this is said about something small and indivisible’ (1971: 28). 16 On the editorial placement of vowels, Jones remarks: ‘the printed Arabic versions [are] realizations of what is in the manuscript and not straight transcriptions . . . this is largely, though not entirely, because of the addition of some vocalization’ thus ‘all who have relied upon them are perforce misled’ (1988: 3, 7, emphasis added). 14

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Quzmān, Ih·sānallah apparently understands it as a question, imposing a question mark on the Arabic:17 ya-nfaʿ-ak yā malīh·an kullu ta-ʿmal ʿabas wa l-diyāf ˙ what it/he-profits-you O sweet all-it you-do frivolity and the-guests qad h·allu? have left ‘What good is all of that foolishness you’re doing, sweetheart, now that the guests have gone?’ (ed. Ih·sānallah, 1999: 492, zajal 126/3/5 and 6)

(4.13) aš

This in itself is noteworthy for what it reveals of editorial interventions. In the published texts, punctuation is a modern affectation, for medieval writers of Arabic used no such devices. Ih·sānallah is nevertheless justified in her interpretation, as the construction iš/aš tanfaʿ ‘of what use . . . ?’ is a commonly occurring motif in the genres of amtāl and azjāl; it appears elsewhere in contexts warranting the interpretation of iš in its canonically interrogative quality, albeit in many instances in which an allomorph of aš/iš appears, often bearing some rhetorical negativity. As a figure of speech, it is known from writing from the eastern Arab world dating more than two centuries before Ibn Quzmān from 4th/9th-century Baghdad in representations of speech in the compendious Kitāb al-Aġāni ‘The Book of Songs’ of al-Asfah· āni ˙ (d. 356/967). There, it is rendered orthographically as the interrogative {ayš}: (4.14) ayš

ya-nfaʿ il-ʿilm wa l-adab min lā māl la-hu what he-benefits the-knowledge and the-literature from not money to-it ‘What good is learning and literature without money?’ (ed. Muhanna et al., 2008, v. 13, l. 132)

The pragmatic implicature of the rhetorical question is such that it can be, and no doubt would have been, interpreted to mean ‘learning and literature are of no use’. Corriente himself elsewhere interprets the same idiom from a xarja of Ibn Sahl (d. 1000/1591) as a question:18 (4.15) w-āš

ya-nfaʿ al-kitmān and-what he/it-profits the-keeping.silent ‘¿de qué sirve la discreción?’ (Corriente 1987: 219) (of what use is discretion?)

The interrogative wāš still exists in Moroccan Arabic, meaning not ‘what?’ but ‘is it that?’ (Caubet 1993a: 73; Harrell 1965/2010: 151). We shall return to this in Chapter 5,

By contrast, she does not impose a question mark on a similar expression in 149/2/4. In the decade intervening between his Dialect Bundle and his work with xarajāt, Corriente may have been coming round to changing his mind about the denotation of iš tanfaʿ as a straight negative construction. He leaves it out of his Dictionary. 17 18

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but for now, reading it as such here indicates that this is indeed a rhetorical question, the answer to which, if given, would be a decidedly negative la discreción no sirve nada or ‘discretion serves nothing’. Yet Corriente may be safer leaving it as the more transparent de qué sirve ‘of what good . . . ?’, for the same formula appears repeatedly in Ibn Quzmān, in context, always easily interpreted as a question: (4.16) w-aš

ta-nfaʿ [sic] il-imān wa a-h·nat mā huwa and-what she/it-profits the-faith and most-perjurious which he l-insān idā h·alaf the-human when swore [an oath] ‘What good is faith when the most treacherous liar is he who swears an oath?’ (ed. Ih·sānallah, 1999: 543, zajal 149/2/4)

Clearly, what the poet is implying is that faith is of no consequence; the interrogative does indeed imply some rhetorical negativity. Whether realized as aš or iš, it remains an interrogative, and the proverb of al-Zajjālī in (4.11) is a rhetorical question ‘Of what use is advice to a fool?’, the implicit answer being, ‘it is useless’.

4.4 Rhetorical questions in Arabic In his Grammatical Sketch, Corriente reads the word as aš, there interpreting it as an interrogative in the verses from Ibn Quzmān that he cites; but he sees it as beginning a ‘semantic transfer’ (1977: 145) such that he adduces other verses from the same text with aš functioning as a negator, glossing it as such. In his Dictionary of Andalusi Arabic (1997a: 17), he has become fully committed to reading many of the same verses as including not aš but iš, interpreting this as a negator and (as it happens) abandoning his non-Arab sources, citing Ibn Quzmān alone.19 There, and in alZajjālī—one of only two of his other native Arabic sources in the Sketch for what he reads as a negator iš (the other being Ibn ʿĀsim), regardless of how they are written ˙ (or pronounced)—these (some of them living idioms) may also be read as interrogatives, rhetorically implying negation. For example, by labelling iš a negator rather than an interrogative, Corriente is obliged to render as ‘I do not know’ the phrase iš nadri—a formula similar to anīš nadri in (4.9)—drawn from the writings of Juan Ruiz, known as the Arcipreste de Hita (d. c.750/1350), who perhaps learnt his Arabic at a young age at his mother’s knee (Monroe 2011: 28–30). Because of his early exposure to Arabic—his mother is said to have been a Moorish slave woman—we may accept the Arcipreste’s witness as representing idiomatic speech, more reliable than those of the later Christian writers who concerned themselves with Arabic for the sake of converting the Muslims. The Arcipreste’s famous work Libro de buen 19 In his Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Andalusi Arabic he sees both as negators, writing, ‘AA has innovated two negative particles of its own, a/iš and is’ (2013: 126).

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amor is not of that genre, being an often picaresque parable of the follies and snares of earthly love as opposed to divine love, written in Spanish, not Arabic, but incorporating Arabic literary elements and themes (Monroe 2011), including some transliterated Arabic in a dialogue with a Moorish woman whom the author wishes to marry. Thus, the full phrase that Corriente adduces is dijo la mora ysnedri ‘Said the Moorish woman, ysnedri’ (1977: 145).20 Here again, while an interpretation of this formula as implicating a negative may produce a sound communicative rendering of the pragmatic force of the phrase as ‘I do not know’, its underlying meaning must remain ‘what [do] I know?’ Such rhetorical negativity is not without equal in modern Arabic vernaculars, finding resonance in contemporary Levantine and Egyptian Arabic:21 (4.17) a. ēš ʿarraf-ni

(Levantine)22

What informed-me b. iš ʿarraf-ni What informed-me

(Egyptian)

Regardless of their verbatim meaning ‘What has informed me?’, these phrases are characteristically understood not as expressing that, instead bearing the message ‘I don’t know’, usually with the pragmatic force of an emphatic denial, something roughly equivalent to ‘How should I know?’ Writing specifically about ysnedri in Libro de buen amor, Cantarino interprets the phrase exactly that way: ‘The prefix ix [iš] . . . (meaning . . . what?) . . . in the Arabic dialect spoken in al-Andalus must have been frequently used as a rhetorical interrogative form equivalent to a negative’ (1961: 215). Corriente does not speculate on the pragmatics of such interrogatives, but all the native Arabic examples he adduces can be interpreted in such a light; thus the phrase as it appears in the writings of Juan Ruiz is best interpreted ‘Said the Moorish woman, “What do I know?” ’ The interrogative element š is now lost to Egyptian Arabic except in formulaic remnants, in which are manifested the very same interrogative iš, such as iš ʿarraf-ni; 20 The line from Libro de buen amor appears in its surviving manuscripts as yznedri, lesnedir, and lesnedri (Cejador 1931: 226, n. 1509), the latter two perhaps lending themselves to a negative reading of the phrase. Mignani and di Cesare (1970: 288) render it as a negative ‘I don’t know’ in their English translation (see also Monroe 2011: 37–8; Cantarino 1964). In The Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Andalusi Arabic, Corriente sees it as an instance of the negator is (2013: 127), which he speculates may be a back formation of lis, the characteristically Andalusi reflex of the FA laysa ‘it is not’, also suggesting that it might be an interrogative laš. In the MS, for various reasons, the {š/‫ }ﺵ‬can be confused with {s/} (2013: 127, n. 280). The negator is may itself constitute a scribal error. 21 Corriente himself (1994: 13) extols the benefits to be gained from a comparison with living dialects of Arabic in comprehending Andalusi Arabic. 22 In Levantine varieties, this is often (perhaps more commonly) cast in the indicative: š-b-yaʿarrif-ni (lit. ‘What informs me?’).

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išmiʿna? (< what is the meaning) ‘why [this and not that]’; and išh·āl? (< what is the condition) ‘what about [this when compared to that]’.23 Nevertheless, an interrogative Vš was surely more productive in Egyptian Arabic of an earlier era, for it is preserved in a proverb collection from the early 20th century, for example (among twenty-four others):24 (4.18) īš

ʿarraf il-h·imīr bi-akl il-ganzabīl what informed the-donkey with-eating the-ginger ‘What do donkeys know of eating ginger?’ (Taymūr 2007: 119)

Because proverbs retain archaic forms, the age (and indeed the provenance) of Taymūr’s proverbs cannot be known.25 Regardless, his interrogative īš can confidently be accepted as an older feature of Egyptian Arabic, for in a 9th/15th-century work of Ibn Sūdūn (d. 868/1464), ‘the interrogative pronoun ayš “what?” and its derivative layš “why?” occur frequently throughout the text’ (Vrolijk 1998: 154),26 for example: yā ʿamm-i hady āyš and-said-I O uncle-my that what ‘So I said, “What’s that, Uncle?” ’ (Vrolijk 1998: 138, l. 13)

(4.19) fa-qult

Plainly, the interrogative was more often pronounced with /š/ in the Egyptian vernaculars of the 15th century than it was in later eras. Indeed, it appears to have been used exactly as it is in the modern Levantine varieties, where the interrogative element š is no fossilized form but lives on in such emblematic Levantisms as lēš ‘why’, corresponding to the Andalusi laš;27 šū/šu ‘what’, corresponding to the Andalusi aššu, itself with modern analogues in northern Syria; and ēš/āš/aš/@š/iš,

23 In Moroccan, šh·āl means ‘how much’ and can be used as an exclamative (Caubet 1993b: 171–2), more on which below. 24 Taymūr explains: ‘Said to one who objects to something he does not understand and is not good at.’ Essentially the same proverb appears in Westermarck and El-Baqqali’s collection of Moroccan proverbs, roughly contemporary with that of Taymour, which they helpfully elucidate, ‘He who has bought something . . . and is criticized for it, may . . . indignantly reply: aš yaʿraf l-h·mīr fe l-skenjabīr ‘What does the donkey know about ginger?’ (1930: 172, 366). 25 It appears in Ibn ʿĀsim: āš yadri h·imār aš zangˇabīl (ed. al-Ahwānī 1962: 307, proverb 133); Marugán (1994: 90) renders this ‘El˙ burro no sabe qué es el gengibre’ (The donkey doesn’t know what ginger is). In light of the other renditions of the proverbs, a better rendering would be ‘Does the donkey know what ginger is?’ Proverbs may, of course, change in their retelling; a recent collection of Egyptian proverbs (Al Ekhnawy and Ali 2011: 25) renders the same maxim with the currently used Egyptian interrogative ēh ‘what?’, in which the donkey has become a monkey. Marugán’s interpretation of the initial āš, spelt with alif madda {‫ }ﺁﺵ‬as it appears in this proverb, is treated below. 26 According to Blanc (1981: 194–5), it occurred frequently in verbatim court records from the 17th century reflecting statements given in vernacular Arabic. 27 Depending upon the environment, and perhaps the local dialect, it may be pronounced as such in Levantine vernaculars as well, if, that is, its orthographic rendering is a true indication of its pronunciation.

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appearing in Andalusi Arabic more or less exactly as it appears in modern varieties from the Yemen to Morocco.28 In his Dictionary, Corriente abandons his non-Arab witnesses, while remaining committed to his reading of iš as a negator.29 There, he adduces only four examples, all drawn from Ibn Quzmān. Yet these too echo common living idioms:30 (4.20) iš

danb al-h·adīd what offence the-iron ‘What is the fault of the iron?’ (Corriente 1997a: 17; ed. Ih·sānallah, 1999: 253, zajal 40/5/4)

Corriente glosses this, ‘It is not the fault of the iron’, and indeed, that is what it is saying pragmatically; but it surely accomplishes this by posing a rhetorical question.31 That this can be so is evident in the echo of such usage found in modern spoken Egyptian Arabic in phrases such as zambu ēh? and its Levantine analogue ēš/ šu zambu?, literally meaning ‘What is his/its offence?’ but with the pragmatic force of ‘He/it is not at fault’. The Egyptian ēh evidently being derived from the same interrogative structure as ēš/aš/@š/iš of other contemporary vernaculars, these

For present purposes, the regional differences in vowel quality between ayš, ēš, āš, aš, @š, and iš may be ignored as historically insignificant; as Palva (1965: 9) notes in a study of anaptyctic and prothetic vowels in Palestinian Arabic, they are inherently unstable, and allophones of any may appear in a single word pronounced twice by the same speaker, while diphthongs (such as [ay]) may also be realized as monophthongs (i.e. [ē]). 29 Whereas in his Sketch, Corriente adduces three of his twelve examples of a putative negator iš from the writings of cleric Pedro de Alcalá, in the Dictionary, he often chastizes him for his ‘poor’ or ‘superficial’ knowledge of Arabic and his ‘ignorance in most fields’, his misunderstanding and misreading of his sources, and his faulty perceptions, leading to clumsy attempts at translation, strange renderings, liberties, inventions, and errors (1997a: xiii, 96, 131, 161, 426, 447, 488, 499, 515, 519, 532, 565). Indeed, Alcalá’s renderings of iš sometimes look odd; see e.g. his work explaining the sacrament of reconciliation, where he writes in somewhat fractured Arabic, apparently using the word as an interrogative (cf. de Lagarde 1883: 37, 23–6; 50, 5–6, and other examples in the Sketch). Hary (2012) remarks of translators of Hebrew and Aramaic sacred texts into Arabic that they ‘felt the need to follow the long tradition of verbatim biblical translation . . . This method of translation, in turn, created many un-Arabic sentences, almost not comprehensible to regular native speakers’ (p. 130, his emphasis). Alcalá may have been misunderstanding the rhetorical force of questions beginning with reflexes of aš, common in modern spoken vernaculars and in renderings of the vernacular appearing in classical texts, mistranslating those reflexes as ‘not’. If a reflex of aš developed into a negator at the pens of non-native writers of Arabic—after the expulsion of Muslim Arabs from the Iberian Peninsula to boot—that is an entirely different matter from its reanalysis as a negator by native speakers of the language. 30 In his Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Andalusi Arabic, he admits this reading: ‘the contexts are various and in some cases, the interrogative rendering would still be possible . . . “What is the fault of the iron?” ’ (2013: 127). 31 The words danb and zamb are cognates, with [z] the allophonic realization in the modern vernaculars of the [d] as it is represented in the Andalusi writing, the grapheme {‫ }ﺫ‬simply being the conventional way of representing the sound graphically to distinguish such words from those whose canonical root included the sound [z] represented as {‫}ﺯ‬. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the [d] may have been pronounced [z] in some Andalusi varieties too. For its part, in spoken Arabic, the [n] assimilates to the following voiceless bilabial stop to become [m]. 28

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sentences are essentially the same syntactically, semantically, and (as we have noted) pragmatically. To render them exact equivalents of each other requires only to strike the iron, as it were: il-h·adīd zambu ēh? ‘The iron, what is its fault’ or ēš zamb il-h·adīd ‘What fault is the iron?’, i.e. ‘The iron is not at fault.’

4.5 Arabic interrogatives as exclamatives Again from the xarjas, Corriente (1987: 235) glosses a similar construction of Ibn Yannaq (d. 547/1153) in just that manner, there transliterating the word with an {a}:32 aš kan dunúbi ‘¿Cuáles fueron mis faltas?’ (What were my faults?).33 Antecedents for this construction as a figure of speech are known from some two centuries before the first documentation of the azjāl and xarajāt, appearing in Kitāb al-Aġāni, along with a counterpart ēh, now mostly found in Egyptian vernaculars: (4.21) fa-qul-t

qabbah· -ak allāh anā ayš danb-i fa-daxa-lt ilā and-said-I disfigured-you Allah I ayš fault-my and-went-I to al-Mutawakkil fa-qāl ēh mā qāl la-k name and-said ēh what said to-you ‘So I said, “May God disfigure you! What fault of mine is it?” Whereupon I went in to [the Caliph] al-Mutawakkil, who said, “What? What did he tell you/What is it that he told you?” ’ (ed. Muhanna et al., 2008, v. 10: 66)

Two of Corriente’s four attestations in the Dictionary come from zajal 7 of Ibn Quzmān, where a putative iš makes its first appearance, both in time and in the dīwān. Here too the idiom is better seen as an interrogative used rhetorically: (4.22) iš wazīr

kātib a-t· amm wa a-šnaʿ iš minister writer most-disastrous and most-horrid ‘What a vizier! A writer most disastrously horrid’ (ed. Ih·sānallah, 1999: 147, zajal 7, verse 7/4)

Pace Corriente (1997a: 17), it makes no sense to interpret this to mean, ‘there is no vizier’ in the context of the poem (or, indeed, even the stanza), wherein the poet is announcing an intended visit to Cordoba to his companion, who asks him what he will do there; he replies that he will go there and do well, presumably in competition against the said poetaster vizier. Treating iš as a negator renders an awkward meaning, something like, ‘there is no vizier a writer most disastrous and horrid’. What is more, whereas this may be Ih·sānallah (1999: 214) elsewhere renders the same construction with {aš}: aš danb al-kuh·ul ‘What is the fault of the kohl?’ 33 Compare Monroe (1977: 109) ‘¿Dónde he pecado?’ (Where have I sinned?). 32

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reference to a state official who was also a writer (not an entirely unlikely proposition in a medieval Arab context), it is just as likely that Ibn Quzmān is using the word wazīr to mean ‘poet’, as he himself was referred to with the same epithet.34 It is easier, and indeed more syntactically justifiable, to interpret this as an interrogative pressed into service as an exclamation of wonder. The ēh in (4.21) and the iš in (4.22) both fit such an interpretation, and would be what d’Avis (2002: 17) calls whexclamatives and Castroviejo (2010) calls how-exclamatives. Both terms are apt for the Arabic, in that the interrogative used, mā, šū, ēš/ēh, is generally interpreted as a ‘what’, but as wh-exclamatives understood, at least when glossed, to mean ‘how’.35 Castroviejo contends that how-exclamatives are properly classified under the wh-exclamative rubric (2010: 22). Further clarifying the terminology, González (2008) distinguishes between quantitative exclamatives, e.g. ‘How many criminals have been arrested!’ and qualitative exclamatives, e.g. ‘How intelligent Isabel is!’ (González 2008: 93). The beginning of a question with a wh-exclamative is a commonly used and not often discussed feature of the vernacular Arabics of Egypt and the Levant, and probably elsewhere, for example, šu id-dini ʿam bitšatti ši ‘What! Is it raining?’ Compare Cowell (1964/2005: 384) šu mā fī h·ada bil-bēt? ‘[What!] Isn’t there anyone at home?’ and kīf, mā m@štāʾ l@š-šām? ‘[What!] Aren’t you homesick for Damascus?’36 In the succeeding strophe, with the poet despairing of providing an adequate description of his patron in Cordoba, the interrogative again looks like a whexclamative followed by a rhetorically negative question: wasf-i bi-mā ʿann-u na-smaʿ ˙ iš it/he-falls description-my with-what about-it I hear ‘What! Can my description match what I hear about him?’ (ed. Ih·sānallah, 1999: 147, zajal 7/9/4)

(4.23) iš yi-qaʿ

34 Although Monroe (1974: 41) accepts the meaning of the word at face value, asserting that he was in fact a vizier, there is no clear evidence that he ever served in a state office, although a relative of his did; instead, by Ibn Quzmān’s day, the word had degenerated to an all-purpose honorific (Colin 1979: 850), much the way ustād (vernacular ustāz), originally meaning something like ‘master’ (as in master craftsman), and in modern times applied to university professors, has now come to be a general honorific, applied to almost anyone of a certain rank (Parkinson 1985: 128–34). 35 Compare e.g. Monroe’s (1977: 109) rendering of the interrogative wāš ‘what’ from a xarja of al-Tut·īlī in a similar manner, not according to its interrogative meaning but also as an exclamation: wāš kān dahā-ni ‘How he has afflicted me’; wāš kān balā-ni ‘How he has tormented me’; wāš kān daʿā-ni ‘How he has upset me’. In his Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Andalusi Arabic, Corriente identifies both aš and wāš as exclamatives: aš yat·ib li h·adītak ‘how pleasant your talk is to me!’ (cf. Ih·sānallah 1999: 133, n. 4) and waš qadar qalbī yahwāk ‘how my heart loves you!’ (2013: 129). 36 Cowell neither glosses nor comments here upon the sentence-initial interrogatives, in fact maintaining later that unaccented šu (in indication of which he transcribes without the macron) is ‘too mild to be . . . an interjection’ (1964/2005: 570), nevertheless labelling it and kīf ‘how?’ exclamatives (p. 576), giving a few examples of more forceful usage.

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Here, Corriente’s rendering, ‘my description cannot match what I hear from him’ (1977: 145) or ‘does not tally with . . . ’ (1997a: 17), works just as well as posing it as a rhetorical question, the expected answer to which would be: ‘It does not’;37 and this is exactly the point. Again, it is more justifiable to interpret iš as an exclamative interrogative, lending to the following question a negative implicature, than it is to view it as an unambiguous negator, a type which exists nowhere in any extant variety or any known extinct one (save the Andalusi, if Corriente is to be believed). With that, the peculiar conformations in (4.9) and (4.10) can also be interpreted as interrogatives: (4.24)

a. qal-li man rā-k wa lis min asrā-k mira38 ayyāk yā nāzir ayyāk anīš n-adri ˙ ‘He said to me, “Who has seen you and has not been captivated?39 “Look, but beware, you who look, beware. Do I know?” ’ b. ism-u ʿalay-ya wa huwaš yi-ġat· t· i rgˇlay-ya ‘His name is on me, but does it cover my legs?’

In Chapter 5, we examine analogues to these, effectively copular interrogatives, and their implications for the development of negation with -š. But first we must examine the orthography of the extant manuscripts of the Andalusi texts for justification for reading these as interrogatives and not negators.

4.6 Orthographic idiosyncrasies The reading of interrogative aš as iš appears to arise in the ambiguous orthography inherent in the Arabic script. Ih·sānallah does not consistently reproduce the vowels in her edition of Ibn Quzmān. Nor do surviving manuscripts of the dīwān (ed. de Gunzburg 1890) always display them. For example, if printed editions (García Gómez 1972; Corriente 1980; Ih·sānallah 1999) show a vowel with {‫ }ﺍﺵ‬in verse 7/4/3, the first putative instance of iš, the manuscript does not. What is more, in verse 7/9/4, the second such occurrence, there appears to be a fath·a, the vowel sign for /a/. Fig. 4.4 shows those two verses from the manuscript. 37 Curiously, in the Dictionary Corriente is reading this iš, while in the Sketch he reads it aš. Ih·sānallah (1999: 147) transcribes it as iš. 38 In (4.9), Corriente interprets this mr as the imperative of the Arabic root ‘go’, transcribing it {múr} (cf. Zwartjes 1997: 206, who also views it as such) whereas, in context, it makes better sense to see this as the Romance verb mirar ‘to watch/see’, here in the (familiar) imperative mira, to yield ‘look’ in the gloss. Recall that xarjas characteristically incorporated elements of Romance. Without the short vowels /u/, /i/, and /a/, the consonantal skeleton of the word mira would be {mr}, i.e. {‫}ﻣﺮ‬. 39 Corriente has rendered the first clause as a declarative, ‘Pocos son los que te ven . . . ’ The construction of the Arabic sentence, however, may permit an interrogative, the pronoun man either being read as an interrogative ‘who?’ or as an indefinite ‘whoever’. Interpreting anīš/anāš as an interrogative, as well as permitting a smoother reading than his ‘Nada yo sé’, also justifies reading the first clause as a question. Notice that in Fig. 4.2 al-Dāya has twice interpreted the phrase as posing a question.

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FIG. 4.4 Vowel placement of the first two instances of ‫ ﺍﺵ‬in de Gunzburg’s Ibn Quzmān

FIG. 4.5 de Gunzburg’s Ibn Quzmān showing three variant spellings of ‫ﺍﺵ‬

Tuulio (1941: 80–82), who always transcribes the vowel as {a}, provides an image of the manuscript, shown in Fig. 4.5, in which is illustrated some of the possibilities for placing the vowel on {‫}ﺍﺵ‬, once without hamza, once with, and once with hamzat alwasl (indicating an elided glottal stop) in a more easily readable segment, 84/10–12, ˙ also from de Gunzburg. Apparently also confused by the orthography, Marugán interprets many examples of iš as a negator in her study of Ibn ʿĀsim’s collection of proverbs. Although she has ˙ enjoyed the benefit of consulting the manuscripts housed in various locations, she nevertheless relies upon the 1962 critical edition of al-Ahwānī (1994: 6–8). In that edition, almost all proverbs beginning with {‫}ﺍﺵ‬, the very word in question, are written with alif madda {‫}ﺁﺵ‬, apparently indicating a long vowel, appearing to represent the pronunciation ʾāš. It is thus difficult to see how Marugán interprets some proverbs as beginning with the interrogative aš, while perceiving others immediately succeeding or following as beginning with what she is labelling a ‘negator’ iš, when both actually begin with the same grapheme.40 Another easily interpretable example of hers should suffice to illustrate the point: She compounds the confusion by interpreting the grapheme líš as a negator (1994: 63), apparently attempting to continue the process of the transformation of an interrogative iš to a negator by proposing a hybrid of the common Andalusi negator lis (supposedly a reflex of the FA laysa) as a graphic rendering of 40

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na-šrúbu ʿalí-h iš ate-we so.that we-drink prep-it ‘No hemos comido nada para que bebamos sobre ello’ (1994: 83) (We have not eaten so that we might drink on it)

(4.25) íš akál-na h·attá

Here again, living speech clarifies that in this proverb Marugán’s íš is more readily interpreted as an interrogative, even while implicating a negative proposition; variations of such a question could be multiplied in many other Arabic varieties. Indeed, two questions are possible: in one, more strongly implicative than the other, the interrogative serves as an exclamative, the following question being a polar, yes/no question, querying a proposition; in the other, it is a pure interrogative, querying an argument: (4.26) a. ēš

akal-nā h·atā ni-šrab? Q ate-we that we-drink ‘What! Have we eaten, that we might drink?’ ‘What have we eaten, that we might drink?’ (Jordanian)

b. šu akal-nā ta ni-šrab? Q ate-we that we-drink ‘What! Have we eaten, that we might drink?’ ‘What have we eaten, that we might drink?’ (Lebanese) Interpreted in any way, the implication is ‘We have not eaten that we might now drink,’41 such that Marugán’s understanding of the pragmatic force of the proverb is not incorrect; it is her reading of ‫ﺁﺵ‬, and by extension other graphic reproductions of the interrogative aš/ēš/iš, that is open to question. Indeed, the ‫ ﺁﺵ‬here is so obviously analogous to living Arabic interrogatives that, even while it can be acknowledged that what is meant pragmatically is exactly ‘No hemos comido’, the Arabic has not actually stated that, only implying it. The proverb itself, as it appears in Ahwānī along with those preceding it from the top of the page, appears in Fig. 4.6. 71. āšša šayʾ

an lā yudrā ? qāl šayʾ an lā yunwā what thing that not known said thing that not intended ‘What thing is unknown? A: Something unintended’

72. āš

aswad idā uqill sīdi ah·amd what black if said sir name ‘What is a black if he is called Sir Ahmad?’

lis + iš. This is probably laš, i.e. an Andalusi rendering of lēš or layš (an allophone, lāš, continues in use in rural Levantine varieties). In the Sketch, Corriente proposes this same idea; but, in the Descriptive and Comparative Grammar, he retracts it: ‘it is questionable that a hybrid liš has existed’ (2013: 127). 41

In many Arab societies, it is common for diners to refrain from drinking water until after the meal.

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Andalusi Arabic negators and interrogatives

FIG. 4.6 Interrogative āš in Ahwānī’s Ibn ʿĀsim ˙ 73. āš

daxxal dart· a li-mangˇal ˙ what involved fart to-scythe/sickle ‘What matters a fart to a sickle?’ 74. āš adxal bismillāh fī xubz-nā what involved basmalah in bread-our ‘What does the Basmalah have to do with our daily bread?’ 75. aš

adxal ist li-qalb qāl al-ʿurūq muttasila ˙ what involved buttocks to-heart said the-veins connected ‘What has the arse to do with the heart? A: They are connected by veins’ 76. āš bayn qarqagˇgˇa wa bat· t· īx qāl mabīt layla what between unripe. cucurbit and watermelon said overnight-.stay night ‘What’s the difference between an unripe and ripe watermelon? A: A single night’42 77. āš šīy asraʿ min al-barq qāl yad faqī idā uqill xud what it faster from the-lightening said hand faqīh when said take ‘What’s faster than lightening? A: The hand of a faqīh when told, “take” ’ 78. āš akal-na h·atā na-šrab ʿalay-h

Marugán interprets all of those leading up to 78 (٧٨) as interrogatives, except number 72 (٧٢). There, however, she is taking liberties in her rendering: ‘Nadie es negro si le Compare the same proverb in al-Zajjālī: his no. 85; ed. Bencherifa (1971: 25, n.), explains that it is said amongst the fellāh·īn that watermelons, when ready, ripen overnight. Marugán renders this communicatively as the difference between the seed and the ripened fruit in her euphonic entre semilla y sandía. 42

Orthographic idiosyncrasies

85

llaman Sidi Ahmad’ (Nobody is a black [slave] if they call him Sir Ahmad). Although this is indeed the implication of the proverb, the structure is that of a rhetorical question, in which the {‫ }ﺁﺵ‬is interrogative: ‘What is a black if he is called Sir Ahmad?’ Note, too, that the {‫ }ﺍﺵ‬written without alif madda in 75 (٧٥) is, in context, clearly an interrogative, in the genre of the two succeeding proverbs, taking the form Q/A: āš . . . qāl . . . ‘What [is something]? He said, [i.e. he answered] . . . ’ Marugán reads the two succeeding proverbs of the same structure appropriately as such. Elsewhere Marugán does adduce usage in which the word falls elsewhere in the proverb, where it is written without alif madda but, again, without vowels or a hamza that might indicate vowel placement. For example, proverb 781 (al-Ahwānī 1962: 358; Marugán’s 783, 1994: 162), also adduced in Corriente’s Sketch (1977: 145): aš tbt šy w huwa y-gˇrrd srwāl says-to-him aš you.spend.the.night ši and he he-strips pants

(4.27) huwa y-ql-lu

he

Corriente glosses this, ‘he says to him: you shall not stay overnight, but he takes his pants off ’. Marugán reduplicates his interpretation of aš/iš, while more faithfully capturing the circumstantial clause, beginning with w huwa, lit. ‘and he’ but with the effective implication ‘while at the same time’: ‘Él le dijo: “No pasarás la noche,” mientras el otro se quitaba los pantalones’ (He said to him: ‘You shall not spend the night,’ while the other takes off his pants). This is, in fact, impossible to interpret as other than an interrogative, the ši in tbt ši acting in its recognizable role as a polar interrogative forming a yes/no question, as explored in Chapter 3. A corrected reading, capturing the ironic tone of many a proverb, would, thus, be, ‘He asks him, “What? Are you spending the night?’ while he [the other] is stripping off his pants.’43 Indeed, Marugán’s justification for her readings of iš as a negator appears to rest entirely upon Corriente’s assertion in the Sketch ‘/iš/ (segregated from the pronunciation with strong imāla [that is, when the low, back vowel becomes a high, front vowel] from the interrogative /aš/) begins its semantic transfer’ (1977: 145); for, Marugán asserts, iš was differentiated from the interrogative aš by means of a second-degree imāla (Marugán 1991: 260) and /iš/ (‘cuyo origen está en el interrogativo /aš/ con imāla’) (Marugán 1994: 63). The orthographic representations in these poems and proverbs, including the commonly occurring {‫}ﺍﺵ‬, may simply represent attempts at approximating in

Seen like this, Corriente’s examples from Ibn Quzmān aš/iš nurīd nah·laf and iš ka-nurīd-ak h·āyy, in both instances the iš preceding a verb, are better seen as wh-exclamatives: ‘What? Do I want to swear?’ and ‘What? Do I want you alive?’ In the Sketch (1977: 145), Corriente transcribes this as aš nurīd nah·laf, whereas in the Dictionary (1997a: 17), it is iš. Ih·sānallah (1999: 189) has rendered it iš, just as she has in zajal 26/3/4 (1999: 215) iš taxša targˇaʿ muqarnas, which Corriente (1977: 145) transliterates with an {a}, reading it as an exclamatory: ‘What, do you fear to fledge?’ In his Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Andalusi Arabic, he sees it as a negative question: ‘Are you not afraid to fledge?’ while admitting that a purely ‘interrogative rendering would still be possible, e.g., “what? are you afraid to fledge?” ’ (2013: 127). 43

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Andalusi Arabic negators and interrogatives

writing the way the word and its variants were realized in the spoken language of the day.44 Judging from the orthography of Ibn ʿĀsim’s treatment of {‫}ﺁﺵ‬, this should ˙ read ʾāš. Although it is not impossible to find the interrogative pronounced like this, especially when phonologically conditioned, this may instead be an attempt to reproduce in writing the orthographically irreproducible long vowel in the spoken ēš, a word that does exist in Arabic vernaculars, including (it would appear) Andalusi, if that is indeed what we are witnessing here. Corriente (1987: 232) actually makes reference to what appears to be a somewhat more successful attempt at that in a xarja of Ibn al-Xabbāz, transliterating the attempt >ʾyš mā hiš.3 Obler takes her Cypriot data from Tsiapera (1963: 102),4 who labels miš a ‘conditional’, adducing only two examples: ana miš ruxt ‘I would have gone’ and ana miš maruxt ‘I would not have gone’. These actually look like the apodoses of conditional clauses in Arabic, depending upon the variety, the protasis consisting in a conditional marker (either idā, in, or law, all meaning ‘if ’) and generally a verb in the perfect, for example, law rah· ‘Had he gone’, the full clause thus reading law rah·, ma kuntš ma ruh·t ‘Had he gone, I would not have failed to go [lit. ‘I had not not gone]’ or law rah·, ma kuntš ruh·t ‘Had he gone, I would not have gone’. Unfortunately Tsiapera does not go into detail.5 However, this lends more weight to Obler’s supposition that a negative -š was operable in the mainland dialects of the day. For that matter, the presence of miš as a negator in Beirut—where otherwise the negator -š does not operate in autochthonous Beiruti varieties—if it were not a later acquisition through contact, could itself be an indicator that a negator -š was once more widespread than it now is in Levantine dialects. Negation with a negative -š remains optional in some dialects of the Syrian 3 It is worth noting that Uzbek Arabic retains what appears to be an earlier form of the now prevalent Syro-Lebanese negator mann-, only exhibiting the /n/ in the 1st person forms: mōnī ‘not I’ mōnā ‘not we’ but otherwise mōhu ‘not he’ mōhi ‘not her’, etc. (Fischer 1961: 259). 4 She cites the published dissertation dated 1968, whereas the citation here refers to the dissertation itself from 1963. 5 Borg (2004: 2), who is generally critical of Tsiapera’s work, is silent on the feature.

Early evidence of negator -š I.

mā biddi šay

151

‘Not in my desire a thing’

II. mā biddīš

‘I don’t want’ [šay analysed as a negator]

III. a biddīš

‘I don’t want’ [haplology of bilabial consonants]

IV. biddīš

‘I don’t want’[penultimate stage of a Jespersen’s cycle]

FIG. 7.1 A conjectural grammaticalization cline from negative mā biddīš to biddīš

interior as far east as Soukhne (Behnstedt 1997: 450–55, map 225; Behnstedt and Woidich 2005: 101, map 32; and Fig. 7.3). It remains to be explained why some Syrian dialects, including those of the southern Levant proper, now negate with -š and others do not. Cypriot Arabic gives us another clue in its lacking the characteristically Levantine pseudo-verb bidd- ‘wish/want’. Arguing that because contact between Arabic speakers on Cyprus and the mainland ended in the 12th century, Al-Jallad (2012: 212–13) proposes that reflexes of bidd- are a post-13th-century Levantine innovation, contact between Arabic speakers on Cyprus and the mainland having ended in the 12th century or at least become minimal. Regardless of when it appeared,6 however, mainland Levantine speakers of Arabic must have been negating bdd- with mā . . . š right from the beginning. Otherwise, the variant expression a-bidd-i could never have emerged. The supposition that the /m/ in negative mā when it is paired with a negative -š becomes reanalysed as superfluous cannot hold for a form like a-bidd-i. Implicitly or explicitly supposing a Jespersen’s Cycle, hypotheses about the reduction of mā to ʾa depend upon the presence of a negative -š to assist in the reanalysis, apparently assuming a sequence something like that in Fig. 7.1 (see also Chapter 3). Yet, whereas within this cline, motivation for the reduction of the discontinuous negator from mā to ʾa may be justified, to the contrary, under the assumption that negating with -š never prevailed in the northern Levant and eastwards, it cannot, within the confines of a supposed Jespersen’s Cycle, account for the reduction of mā biddi to ʾa biddi, where the negator ʾa assumes the entire burden of negating. Similarity between word-initial labial consonants notwithstanding, there can be no motivation for reducing the pre-posed negative marker mā when no other negator exists to assist in the assignment of negation. Had there been any tendency toward a reduction of the morpheme, it must have operated in the presence of an enclitic negator -š. On its own, the further reduction of the discontinuous morpheme cannot

6 Al-Hillī (d. ad 1349) documented its usage (as it happens, in the characteristically Beiruti form badd-u ˙ ‘he wants’) in a zajal that he collected from Cairo of the late 13th or early 14th century (ed. Nas·s·ār, 1981: 100). This indicates that if it did in fact emerge in the Levant, it must have spread very quickly. Either that or it was purposefully borrowed by the zajjāl. Even then, it is unlikely that the poet would have inserted into his verse a form thoroughly unfamiliar to his listeners.

152

Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins 0.

bidd-i ši …

[pseudo verb + indefinite determiner ‘I want a/some …]

I.

a bidd-i ši … ?

[interrogative + indefinite determiner ‘Do I want a/some …] → mā bidd-īš !

[negative reply]

II. a bidd-īš !

[both a and –š reanalysed as negator]

III. a bidd-i

[–š abandoned as superfluous]

FIG. 7.2 A conjectural cline from interrogative ʾa . . . š to negative ʾa

proceed to pseudo-verb negations like ʾa biddi, or verbal negations like ʾa baʿref.7 Pairing an interrogative ʾa with an indefinite determiner ši as the original form, however, provides motivation for reanalysis in Fig. 7.2. In step I, when the interrogative is answered in the negative, the interrogative ʾa is removed, to be replaced by the negator mā, while the enclitic -š, originally an existential particle ši (introduced in Chapters 3 and 6 and developed below), remains in place, yielding mā biddīš. When the -š itself was reanalysed as a negator, constructions in which it appeared as an enclitic in any combination with mā, ʾa, or —i.e. biddi ši, mā biddīš, ʾa biddīš, mā biddi, or ʾa biddi—all became construed as negatives. This implies a reanalysis of both interrogatives ʾa and -š as negators prior to a loss of the negator -š. Negation with -š in any combination is a durable feature, persisting over at least a millennium and perhaps much longer. When left to itself, there appears to be no motivation for reanalysing the -š as redundant, leaving the ʾa alone to negate. Yet, negation with ʾa alone does occur, especially in dialects north of Beirut and inward into Syria, as may be seen in Fig. 7.3 (see also Behnstedt 1997: 450–1, map 225). A plausible explanation of this is that the loss of -š in negation came about after Muslim speakers of central and eastern Arabic dialects—carrying a prestigious new religion into the region, in the process of forming an empire—became the new urban elites, and their dialects, that had never negated with -š, became the objects of imitation. The -š in the speech of the earlier inhabitants, adherents of the older religions, became stigmatized, just as it is stigmatized as rural speech in Levantine capitals of today, and was easily abandoned. That it had become scarcely more than a clitic associated with the same negator as that used in the eastern dialects, mā, facilitated its loss.8 The variant negator ʾa survived as a remnant, mostly in unsophisticated rural dialects to the present day. Compare biddīš and baʿref-š (Thackston 1996: 145; Cowell 1964/2005: 383). Some readers have balked at the use of the term ‘clitic’ in reference to the various functions of reflexes of /š/ and especially in regard to the way they are able to position themselves about the phrase. In this capacity, they are behaving in a manner consistent with their status as ‘special in both syntax and morphology’ (Zwicky 1994: xvii–iii), behaving ‘like single-word syntactic constituents in that they function as heads, arguments, or modifiers within phrases, but like affixes in that they are “dependent”, in some way or another, on adjacent words’ (Zwicky 1994: xii). In his seminal article ‘On clitics’, Zwicky demonstrates a 7 8

Early evidence of negator -š

153

Aleppo

Lattakia

Banyas Hamā Soukhne

Tartūs

Palmyra ilQaritēn Beirut Verbal negation in the Levant Damaskus

ma katab a katab ~ ma katab ma katab(i)š a katabš ma katab ~ ma katab(i)š

FIG. 7.3 Distribution of negator ʾa in northern Levantine dialects Source: Behnstedt and Woidich 2005: 101

Borrowing is not usually part of the grammaticalization process, except in instances of what principal grammaticalization theorists Hopper and Traugott call ‘situations of extreme language contact’ (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 213), remarking that otherwise grammaticalization proceeds through processes internal to the language. Heine and Kuteva observe that when contact-induced grammaticalization characteristic property of clitics in the Madurese language of Indonesia in the causative pa- and the verb kumpul ‘to gather’: i-pa-pul-kumpul, i-pul-pa-kumpul, and for some speakers pul-i-pa-kumpul, all meaning ‘kept on being gathered’ (1977: 1–2). In its capacity for arranging itself about the phrase in the aggregate Arabic dialects in which it has appeared historically, reflected in its manifestations in currently spoken varieties, ši in its various reflexes and functions displays emblematic properties as being ‘special in both syntax and morphology’. That is, it behaves in a way characteristic of clitics: it functions above the word level syntactically and on the word level phonologically, it may attach to words belonging to a variety of syntactic categories, it may attach to words or whole phrases, and it occurs at the edge of a word (Zwicky 1994: xix).

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Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins

occurs in such extreme language contact situations, it usually involves ‘large-scale bilingualism among the linguistic communities concerned, or at least in one of the linguistic communities, and it involves a . . . time span, not seldom extending over three to five centuries.’ During that time, ‘transfer requires some kind of interlingual identification . . . some way of equating a grammatical concept Mx of [model] language M with a grammatical concept Rx of [replica] language R. In situations of intensive language contact, speakers tend to develop some mechanism for equating “similar” concepts across languages’ (Heine and Kuteva 2003: 531). The contact between speakers of western Arabic dialects with those of eastern dialects in the capitals of the new Islamic empire, where eastern dialect speakers constituted the new elites—although it did indeed extend over several centuries—could not be considered a situation of extreme contact between languages. Instead, it would have been a situation of dialect admixture, of the type still witnessed amongst Arabic dialects in recent historical time.9 Those dialects that had probably earlier been negating with the discontinuous mā . . . š and ʾa . . . š retained those forms even while losing the -š negator. This no doubt came about via something similar to the mechanism Heine and Kuteva describe—the grammatical concepts are surely similar—but the entities in contact were dialects of the same language, and the loss could have come about quickly. The word šay ‘thing’ had no part to play in the progress from an interrogative to a negator, or for that matter in the formation of the interrogative itself. The supposition that it does appears to be based in the purely superficial resemblance of the word for ‘thing’ and the grammatical markers constructed upon reflexes of /š/. The etymology is not based in any linguistically supported evidence, nor—aside from the assertion by the medieval grammarians al-Farrāʾ and al-Taʿālibī that ayš is derived from ʾayyu šayʾin ‘which thing’ (Chapter 2) and later grammarians citing them as authorities—in any historical sources either.

7.2 The Semitics of ši Another resemblance, however, can be supported by comparative historical methods: the correspondence between West Semitic 3rd person pronouns formed with /h/ and their East Semitic counterparts formed with /š/. The pronouns are shown in Tables 7.1 and 7.2 (from Lipiński 2001: 306–7, 314–15).10

9

For the hints of the operation of a similar process in a modern Arabic context and its attendant complexities, see the studies of Jordanian dialects of Palva (1984), Abd-el-Jawad (1986), and Al-Wer (2006; 2007). The Jordanian varieties are something of a living laboratory of the processes of dialect contact that have been occurring in the Arabophone world throughout its recorded history and to all appearances its prehistory as well. Compare also a similar process in the Moroccan city of Casablanca described in Aguadé (2003) and Hachimi (2007) and in the remarks in Heath (2002: 8–10). 10 There is reason to suppose that the proto-Semitic pronouns themselves stem from proto-Afroasiatic (Ehret 1995).

The Semitics of ši

155

TABLE 7.1 Independent 3rd person pronouns in various Semitic languages

3ms 3fs 3mp 3fp

Proto-Semitic

Babylonian

Ugaritic

Hebrew

Aramaic

Mehri

Arabic

šu-wa ši-ya šu-nu ši-na

šū šī šunu šina

hw hy hw hi

hūʾ(a) hīʾ(a) hēm(mā) hēn(nā)

hū(ʾ) hī(ʾ) hēm hēn

ha(h) sē(h) hēm sēn

huwa, hū hiya, hī hum(ma) hinna/hin

TABLE 7.2 Affixed 3rd person pronouns in various Semitic languages

3ms 3fs 3mp 3fp

ProtoSemitic

Babylonian Ugaritic Hebrew Aramaic Mehri

Arabic

-šu -ši -šun -šin

-šu -šā -šun(u) -šin(a)

-hu -ha -hum(ū) (etc.) -hunna (etc.)

-h -h -hm -hm

-hū -hā -hem(a) -hen(a)

-hī, -ih -hā, -āh -hōn/m -hēn

-h, -hā, -hu -s, -sā, -hā -həm -sən

The correspondence between /š/ and /h/ is generally seen as applying to the divide between East and West Semitic and not usually to languages within these branches. Nevertheless, the West Semitic language Mehri has preserved a sibilant from East Semitic in the alternation between its masculine and feminine personal pronouns, marked with /h/ and /s/ respectively. Moscati et al. (1964: 104–5) go so far as to suggest either that allomorphic Proto-Semitic pronouns formed with /š/ or /h/ or that the masculine was formed with /h/ (huwa) and the feminine with /š/ (šiya).11 Themselves derived from demonstratives, the 3rd person pronouns are but one class of several grammatical operators associated with the š/h dichotomy in Semitic languages. Bravmann (1961), noticing the parallels in languages possessing a causative prefix š/s and a 3rd person pronoun š and those with a causative h or ʾ with a 3rd person pronoun h, concludes that it is warranted to assume that the h developed from š/s; Voigt (1998: 226–8) notes the derivation of many Arabic grammatical particles, including the definite article ʾal-, the conditional ʾin, the relative ʾalladi, and the causative and interrogative ʾa, from an earlier /h/. Also remarking that definite articles are usually derived from demonstratives in Semitic (as well as other languages), Rubin (2005: 65–76) argues for a parent form *han- of the definite article in the Central Semitic languages, under which he includes Arabic. Pat-El (2009) makes 11 Voigt (1987) draws a correspondence between the sibilants /ś/ (IPA ɫ) (found in the MSA śī) and /š/, and Lipiński (2001: 124–5) sees /ś/ as an allophone of /š/.

156

Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins

a distinction between presentatives and demonstratives as such, noting that, among their other features, the Semitic presentatives derived from *hā(n) only assume a demonstrative role when affixed to a demonstrative extension (as in hādā and its derivatives in Arabic), whereas ‘the element *ha(-n) not only lacks such a distinction but may also be cliticized to various elements indiscriminately’ (Pat-El 2009: 23).12 Nevertheless, Diessel (2006), the pre-eminent authority on demonstratives, broadens the definition of demonstratives to include presentatives: In the literature demonstratives are commonly classified as grammatical markers functioning as pronouns and determiners, but . . . this does not adequately characterize their function and status in language . . . demonstratives constitute a unique class of linguistic expressions serving one of the most fundamental functions in language: In their basic use, they serve to coordinate the interlocutors’ joint focus of attention . . . [which] plays a foundational role in communication, discourse, and grammar. (2006: 464)

Nor is the relationship between presentatives and demonstratives limited to Arabic. Rather, they overlap in function to the extent that both are best seen as being of a type. Diessel (1999) recognizes the relationship, defining one class of demonstratives as ‘demonstrative identifiers’: ‘demonstrative identifiers often occur in nonverbal clauses, they are sometimes considered to be functionally equivalent to a demonstrative plus copula . . . often glossed as ‘this/that is’ or ‘here/there is’ (1999: 58). Diessel expands upon the close relationship between the two: Demonstrative identifiers are similar to deictic presentatives such as French voilà, Latin ecce, and Russian vot. . . . such presentatives [have been called] ‘sentential demonstratives.’ Both demonstrative identifiers and sentential demonstratives are commonly used to introduce new discourse topics, but they have different syntactic properties. Demonstrative identifiers are embedded in a specific grammatical construction, a copular or nonverbal clause, while sentential demonstratives are syntactically more independent. Although they might occur in sentences that are functionally equivalent to copular and nonverbal clauses (e.g. Voilà un taxi. ‘Here is a taxi.’), they are more commonly used as one word utterances, which may be loosely adjoined to a neighboring constituent . . . demonstrative identifiers are distinguished from sentential demonstratives, but the distinction is not clear-cut. (1999: 79)

This is precisely the function of presentatives in Arabic, in such expressions as hā huwa or hayyo ‘Here/there he/it is’ and hā ana dā ‘Here I am’, hāyni žāy ‘Here I come’, and many others. That being so, when considering language origins— precisely what proto-languages are supposed to represent—the distinction between presentatives and demonstratives is difficult to maintain. In their earliest protolanguage stages, personal pronouns and presentatives (and hence demonstratives Rubin (2005: 71) remarks upon the demonstrative elements’ ‘tendency to pile up’, as illustrated nicely in the Arabic demonstrative, both in written Arabic and in its innumerable manifestations in the vernaculars (Fischer 1959: 41–98; Magidow 2013: 265–357). 12

The Semitics of ši

157

as well) were probably identical in function and form. Badawi et al. (2004: 47, 336–7) identify both the Arabic hā and dā as presentatives. The distinction that Pat-El correctly makes is based upon the principle that ‘the attested situation is a result of a process, not the original state’ (Pat-El 2009: 28). All of this suggests an early correspondence, probably in the proto-language, between the presentative particle hā, originally ša—itself acting as or associated with a demonstrative and other grammatical functions—and dā. These correspondences are evident in the earliest attested Semitic language Akkadian, in which the 3rd person pronouns, demonstratives, and determiners, also acting as relative and indefinite pronouns, are similar (Gelb 1961: 127–37). These are summarized in Tables 7.3 and 7.4.13 Noting the similarity between Gelb’s list and those for Sargonic Akkadian, Hasselbach observes a correspondence between /š/ and /θ/ in the relative pronouns (2004: 192–7, 210–12), with θu, θi, and θa in the masculine singular, θūt in the plural, and θāt in the feminine singular. She considers the /θ/ to be the etymological origin, under various conditions, corresponding to /s/, /š/, and /θ/ in writing (2004: 68–72). The paradigm as she records it (2004: 211–12) is shown in Table 7.5.

TABLE 7.3 Akkadian demonstrative pronouns

3ms 3fs 3mp 3fp

Nominative

Genitive

Accusative

šu ši – –

šua(ti) šiati – –

šua(ti) – šunuti –

TABLE 7.4 Akkadian determiner-relative-indefinite pronouns

3ms 3fs 3mp 3fp

Nominative

Genitive

Accusative

šu šat šūt šāt

ši šati šūti –

ša – šūt šāt

See also the innumerable examples of usage in Gelb (1957: 246–55). After Hasselbach (2004), Gelb’s reconstructions for unattested persons are not included, ‘since reconstructions of this kind obscure the actual evidence’ (Hasselbach 2004: 196). 13

158

Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins

TABLE 7.5 Sargonic Akkadian relative pronouns

3ms 3fs 3mp

Nominative

Genitive

Accusative

θu θat θūt

θi – θūti

θa θāt θūt

The correspondence between /θ/ and the sibilant /s/ is well attested between FA and the Arabic dialects. Lipiński (2001) suggests that ‘the distinction between voiced and unvoiced sound . . . might not be an original feature of Proto-Semitic’, adducing ‘historically attested spellings dū and tū (“šu”) > še “he of”, “this”, “who” . . . and the frequent lack of differentiation between voiced and unvoiced sound in Semitic cuneiform writing may in fact suggest that . . . /d/ [i.e., IPA ð] and /t/ [IPA θ] . . . were originally allophone or free variations of the same . . . phoneme’ (p. 110).14 In all likelihood, the independent pronouns preceded the suffixed pronouns, the latter appearing as a secondary development, passing first through a clitic stage. Gensler (1998: 263–78) provides both a rationale and a mechanism for such a process with object pronouns, which, as Gensler proposes, would have been at some ‘ill defined stage of late Afroasiatic, . . . not yet Proto-Semitic’ which he calls PreProto-Semitic (1998: 263, 270–1). Thus, ‘the situation in Proto-Semitic was like that in Pre-PS: . . . pronouns were still clitic-like and only loosely bound’ to their heads (p. 271).15 This seems all the more credible when it is considered that ši, in its interrogative function, can come either before or after the predicate or even at the head of the phrase. The same applies to its functioning as a negator in the various manifestations of a negator ši: it either affixes to the verb or pseudo-verb directly, to an object pronoun, or to the negator mā itself in its various configurations, at times appearing as a tightly bound -š, at others appearing as a less tightly bound ši, sometimes negating entire phrases. Meanwhile, Huehnergard and Pat-El (2012: 31) demonstrate a determinative and demonstrative quality of affixed 3rd person pronouns, expressing not possession but ‘situational determination’, appearing in early dialects of Akkadian, a language that did not have a definite article:

14 15

Hasselbach (2004: 72) also recognizes the correspondence between t and ś. See Wilmsen (2013c) for an examination of the process in Arabic.

The Semitics of ši (7.1)

a. kapsum ša silver of ‘yearly rent’

159

šatt-ī-šu year-gen-his/its

b. ana šatt-ī-šu at year-gen-his/its ‘for a/the year’ c. kala ūm-ī-šu all day-gen-his/its ‘the whole day’ Calling a similar phenomenon ‘anchorless possessive suffixes’ in Biblical Hebrew, a language that did possess a definite article, Huehnergard and Pat-El imply that such constructions, as relics of an earlier state, have typically been difficult to interpret, often being ignored altogether (2012: 32): (7.2)

Kallû maʿaˇśê-kem dəbar yôm bə-yôm-ô Finish deeds-your thing day in-day-his/its ‘Finish your chores for the day as every day’

Similarly, for dialects of Aramaic, a few relics of unmotivated possessive suffixes appear in Syriac (2012: 34): (7.3)

tamūz d-kawrān-aw June of-drought-his/its ‘hot June’

Other dialects of Aramaic often form temporal expressions with 3rd person pronouns without an anchor (2012: 35):16 (7.4)

yôm-eh day-his/its ‘today’

hāden this

These temporal expressions should be familiar to Arabists, finding in them parallels in such classical expressions as yawmi-kum hādā ‘this day of yours = ‘that day’ or ʿāmi-him hādā ‘this year of theirs’ = ‘this year’.17 This is no doubt a remnant of the earlier process, reinterpreted. Huehnergard and Pat-El note quite correctly: ‘traditionally, the third-person . . . suffix on ʿām is interpreted as referring to the year the opening statement of this Sūra (Qur’ān 9:28) was made . . . however this is made clear

Compare the expressions yôm-ô in (7.2) and yôm-eh of (7.4) with the Mehri yəmō ‘today’ in (6.8a). 17 Qur’ān 6:130; 32:14; 39:71; 45:34 16

160

Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins

with the demonstrative hādā alone. The phrase “their year” in Classical Arabic would not normally mean “this year” ’ (2012: 36). From this, the authors conclude that in all branches of the Semitic family 3rd person pronouns may be used in another function than marking possession: How can we account for this function? . . . We suggest that the third-person suffixes in these constructions are vestiges of the original anaphoric function of the third-person pronouns in Semitic. It is commonly accepted that the independent forms of the third-person pronouns— Proto-Semitic *su(
ʾa) ‘he, it’ *si(
ʾa) ‘she, it’ *sum(
ū) ‘they (m)’ *si(
ā) ‘they (f) (with *s > *h in most West Semitic languages)—were originally anaphoric demonstrative pronouns, which continue to be used as such in all of the languages except Arabic. (Huehnergard and Pat-El 2012: 37–8)18

The authors point out some further relevant qualities of the 3rd person pronouns: uniquely to the 3rd person, the nominative independent forms and the oblique suffixed forms are similar (in some cases identical); they agree with the preceding noun in gender and number; as direct objects they could be independent or enclitic. At an early stage the proto-form *bayt-V su ‘that house’ was indistinguishable from *bayt-V-su ‘his house’. Eventually such constructions became disambiguated, especially the demonstrative and the temporal constructions, but others too, escaping differentiation, remained as relics of an earlier stage. The similarity between Semitic 3rd person pronouns and demonstratives or other deictic categories and the derivation of one from another is often observed (cf. Barth 1917: 72). In a comprehensive study of pronouns in general, Bhat (2004), after Lyons, makes the reasons for this explicit: There is a ‘fundamental ineradicable difference’ between the two sets of pronouns, which derives from the fact that only first and second person pronouns denote individuals who actually participate in the speech act . . . third person pronouns are . . . obviously dispensable in favour of demonstrative pronouns . . . There are several languages in which the system of person pronouns consists of only first and second person pronouns. Third person pronouns

18 This original anaphoric use of a precursor to the 3rd person pronoun identified by Huehnergard and Pat-El must have been extended by analogy in classical Arabic to apply to the other pronouns; in the Qur’ān, the construction appears more often with the 2nd person plural kum than it does with the 3rd person. A temporal expression of the same structure continues in use in modern Arabic writing, probably a frozen form deriving directly from the classicisms of the Qur’ān, involving the 1st person plural possessive pronoun suffix: yawminā hādā ‘this day/the present day/today’, usually in the genitive, as it characteristically follows a preposition, most often h·atā ‘until’ or ilā ‘to’, as in h·atā/ilā yawminā hādā ‘up to the present day’. In the arabiCorpus newspaper database of 135,360,804 words, it appears 1,166 times, of those 1,143 times (98 per cent) following a preposition. Otherwise it usually appears in construct, as in s·ādif tārīx yawminā hādā ‘corresponding to today’s date’. Very occasionally it may appear in the accusative as the object of a verb: yafs·il yawmanā hādā ʿan dālika l-yawm ‘it separates (i.e. distinguishes) today/this day from that day’; or in the nominative as the subject: yabdaʾ yawmunā hādā bi-mabāhigˇ rūh·iyya ʿamīqa ‘today begins with deep spiritual joy’.

Implications for Arabic

161

are either identical with one of the sets of demonstrative pronouns (or all of them) or are derivationally related to them. (2004: 132)

Bhat points out that this principle does not apply to all languages, but it evidently does apply to Proto-Semitic, with relics of the parent system remaining evident in its daughters.

7.3 Implications for Arabic A symmetrical correspondence thus emerges between presentatives, demonstratives, 3rd person pronouns, existential particles, and the indefinite determiner, all derived from the same /š/ or /h/, perhaps related to /θ/ and /d/, one set of phonemes perhaps ultimately deriving from the other or all originally being allophones of the others. This means that reflexes of /š/ have always served grammatical functions, their semantic content always underspecified even when they served as 3rd person pronouns.19 Consistent with its own continuing contemporary role as a ‘core deictic element’ and a presentative (cf. Badawi et al. 2004: 47), the demonstrative dā itself probably began as a presentative. This further suggests a parent form for the Arabic attributive dū (and its derivative inflections dī, dā, dāt), meaning something like ‘belonging to/associated with/having the quality of ’ itself functioning as a presentative, the latter no doubt its original function. This existential meaning ‘he of ’ that Lipiński suggests (or ‘it of ’) draws attention to another usage that Piamenta documents for Yemeni Arabic in šayt and its plural ʾašyāt (1990: 273), the /t/ in which he evidently finds surprising, marking his dictionary entry with an exclamation point, the meanings for which he gives as ‘element, matter, affair’, along with ‘thing’ and ‘something’. This appears to be a precursor of the genitive exponent (a grammatical word if ever there was one) of various Levantine dialects šīt or šēt (Cowell 1964/2005: 490), perhaps having its origin in phrases such as ‘he/she/it of someone’, the /t/ deriving from that of the genitive demonstrative attested in Akkadian (Gelb 1961: 134) or the non-nominative independent personal pronouns of East and West Semitic (Lipiński 2001: 308 and Chapter 2). In modern Syro-Palestinian varieties, relics of these old forms survive in the presentative/demonstrative šāʿ- (Fischer 1959: 199–200; Lipiński 2001: 510; Cowell 1964/2005: 564–5) and the genitive exponent šīt- (or šēt-) (Cowell 1964/2005: 490; Harning 1980: 50, 67; Obler 1975: 68–70), now largely restricted in usage to the language of rural dwellers and of the elderly (Grotzfeld 1965: 92).20 Each of these is affixed to a personal pronoun: šāʿ-ho ‘there he/it is’ and šīt-u ‘belonging to him/of him’. The ending consonant /ʿ/ in šāʿ- may well be a secondary development,

19 20

Fischer (2004: 719) rightly observes: ‘pronouns have very little referential content’. It is also the genitive exponent in Cypriot Maronite Arabic.

162

Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins

phonologically conditioned by the affixing of a pronoun to the original demonstrative, the /ʿ/ arising by dissimulation out of šā or even šāʾ when associated with a 3rd person pronoun beginning with /h/, as it usually is in modern speech; when affixed to a 3rd person pronoun, it is realized šah·h·o (Fischer 1959: 199–200), thence levelled to appear with all suffixed personal pronouns. Such dissimulation occurs in an analogous setting with the genitive exponent of Egyptian Arabic bitāʿ, where the /ʿ/ dissimulates to the following /h/ of the 3rd person pronoun, yielding bitah·h·u ‘his’ (literally ‘belonging to him/of him’).21 For its part, the consonantal infix /t/ in the Syro-Palestinian genitive exponent šīt- appears to be an original feature, as may be seen in its appearance in the Akkadian pronouns in Tables 7.3–7.5. Indeed, the similarity between the Arabic plural forms šiyāt and šayyūt and those of the Akkadian lend compelling credence to such an etymology. For that matter, the transition from /š/ to /h/, at least until recently, remained an operable process in Arabic vernaculars, those having undergone such a transformation in retrievable historical progressions. In Egyptian vernaculars of the 15th–17th centuries, with their interrogative ēš (documented less often than the now characteristic ēh), we may have captured -š in the process of transforming into the -h. The -š has not been lost; it has simply undergone the demonstrable š > h tendency of Semitic tongues. A remnant of the /h/ can occasionally be heard clearly articulated in such expressions as the interjection eh da!? ‘What’s this!?’ and the even more forceful ‘deh da!?’ (< dā ēh dā!?) ‘That! What’s that!?’ (the parent form is also still available). In Tunisian Arabic, several of the interrogatives formed with a suffixed -š can alternatively be pronounced with an -h: lāš/lāh ‘Why?’ kīfāš/kīfāh ‘How?’ waqtāš/waqtāh ‘When?’ qaddāš/qaddāh ‘How much/many?’ That tendency, noted by Bravmann, is not an exclusive operation, applying to all instances of the marker where it occurs. Most varieties of Arabic have, therefore, surely completed the š > h transformation of the 3rd person pronouns and the /š/ > /h/ > /ʾ/ of the causative prefix, but some varieties retain a definite article /hal-/;22 a causative, and also a 1st person marker /ha-/; and survivals of the original /š/ in šah·h·o and šīt-u, just as both the /h/ and the /s/ are preserved in the alternation between the masculine and feminine pronouns of Mehri. A salient feature of grammaticalization is that sound changes do not apply categorically throughout the process, instead sometimes leading to ‘irregular and bizarre sound changes’ (Rubin 2005: 56).

21 It may be significant that the dialects of Egypt, having lost a productive existential and indefinite determiner ši, have developed the genitive exponent bitāʿ in its place. Levantine dialects, retaining an indefinite determiner but not employing šīt- as a genitive exponent, use the analogous tabaʿ-. 22 A remnant is surely to be found in the demonstrative phrase of Levantine varieties, in which no gender distinction is made between the masculine or feminine (or for that matter plural): hal-zalame ‘that man’, hal-binit ‘that girl’, hal-ʿālam ‘those people’.

Implications for theory

163

7.4 Implications for theory The point of all of this is to demonstrate the close correlation between all of these grammatical functions formed possibly by a single set of function words or a small set of closely related ones all derived from a single set of allophones or a set of closely related ones. On the other hand, none of them is derived from a content word, or at least none that can be detected. This, too, is consistent with the quality of demonstratives. As it happens, the place that demonstratives occupy in theory, such as it is, happens to fit the facts of Arabic (and by extension Semitic) grammatical markers neatly, with Arabic especially conforming to a handful of theoretical constructs on the fringes of mainstream theory. Finding the notion that content words—i.e. words denoting qualities, actions, properties, and things—are the earliest and most basic units of human communication to be naïve and not empirically demonstrable, Diessel (2011: 1–2) suggests that grammatical markers are often derived not from content words but from other grammatical markers, of which the most basic are demonstratives. From those, other functional classes derive, including interrogative pronouns, indefinite pronouns, and personal pronouns. What is more, of these derivative functions, Diessel singles out demonstratives and interrogatives as sharing certain fundamental qualities: Like demonstratives, interrogatives constitute a special class of linguistic expressions that is not consistent with standard assumptions of grammaticalization theory. There is less cross-linguistic research on interrogatives than on demonstratives, but the available data suggest that interrogatives are universal and older than other function morphemes . . . Like demonstratives, interrogatives seem to form a genuine class of expressions that are part of the basic vocabulary of every language. (2011: 9)

Diessel calls attention to another quality that the two share: ‘Demonstratives are generally so old that their roots are not etymologically analyzable’ (2006: 463, 465, 475, 481); ‘interrogatives are universal and older than other function morphemes: Their roots are generally so old that it is impossible to reconstruct their historical source’ (2011: 9). He evidently would not agree that the Arabic interrogative can be derived from the word for ‘thing’: ‘there is currently no evidence that question words developed from a lexical source’ (2011: 9). And, indeed, regardless of near-universal speculation to the contrary, no such evidence is forthcoming for Arabic, at least not for the polar interrogatives.23 Respecting their primeval origins, and remarking further on the similarities between demonstratives and interrogatives, Diessel notes that they often encode basic, as it were, primitive, semantic categories: ‘The most conspicuous property that demonstratives and interrogatives have in common is 23

Some Arabic interrogatives are transparently derived from content words; see Versteegh (2004).

164

Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins

their meaning. Across languages, the two types of expressions are often organized in pairs encoding the semantic features of person, thing, place, direction, time, manner, and amount’ (2011: 10). Admitting that his is an isolated view of demonstratives, not often taken into account in the grammaticalization literature (2012: 36, 38), Diessel nevertheless points out that ‘demonstratives provide a frequent historical source for definite articles, third person pronouns, relative pronouns, complementizers, conjunctive adverbs, copulas, focus markers, and a wide range of other grammatical items that have no, or no obvious, relationship to content words’ (2012: 36). This is precisely what we have seen in many of the function words in the Semitic languages: they all may be plausibly traced to a demonstrative origin, lending strong support to Diessel’s claim that some, perhaps many, grammatical markers are derived from demonstratives, themselves grammatical markers, and not from lexical sources at all (2012: 38).

7.5 Processes of grammaticalization In a major readjustment to theory, Diessel suggests that ‘we abandon the hypothesis that all function morphemes are eventually derived from a lexical source and take demonstratives for what they are: a unique class of linguistic expressions providing another frequent source for the development of grammatical markers’ (2012: 38). Another sceptic in regard to the unwavering unidirectionality of grammaticalization, Joseph (2005) has even offered a name for the process whereby such processes may proceed: the derivation of grammatical markers from other grammatical markers is not sequential movement along a cline from content to grammatical or from less grammatical to more grammatical; it is instead a ‘lateral shift’, defined as something of a movement in place: Lateral shifts can be defined as a change in the form of a grammatical affix that . . . does not alter the element’s grammatical nature or status in terms of where it falls on the ‘cline’ of grammatical status (from word to affix). Thus after the change, the element in question is neither more nor less grammatical than before, so it is a ‘movement’, in that change has occurred, but one that goes ‘laterally’ on the cline, not up or down it. (Joseph 2005: 1–2)

Joseph provides several examples of such lateral shifts and references many others, concluding that as genuine instances of grammatical change, lateral shifts are ‘numerically robust and quite common’ (p. 6). Taking a leaf from Janda (2001), he points out that grammaticalization is by definition unidirectional, meaning that anything that is otherwise must be something other than grammaticalization. Under such a definition, however, grammaticalization becomes no more than an epiphenomenon of grammatical change (cf. Janda 2001: 266 and passim), as such ‘more and more restricted and thus less and less interesting’ so that ‘one must wonder why one particular type of grammatical development should be the object of such

Processes of grammaticalization

165

intense interest but not other types’ (Joseph 2005: 6). In that respect, Janda comments: Given that even writers on grammaticalization themselves freely acknowledge the involvement of several distinct processes in that larger set of phenomena, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the notion of grammaticalization, too, tends to represent an epiphenomenal telescoping. That is, it may involve certain typical ‘path(way)s’, but the latter seem to be built out of separate stepping-stones which can often be seen in isolation and whose individual outlines are always distinctly recognizable. (2001: 270)

That is, it is merely an epiphenomenon, ‘which can safely be retired from the set of primitive “processes” needed for studying long-term diachrony (especially over hundreds and hundreds of years)’ (Janda 2001: 272)—or, in the case of Arabic and the Semitic languages, millennia. Joseph concludes: ‘whether or not lateral shifts constitute “grammaticalization” in some sense of the term, it would seem that it is at one’s own historical linguistic peril to ignore them, and to think that we have nothing to learn from them seems shortsighted’ (Joseph 2005: 7). Either grammaticalization theory accommodates other types of grammatical change, or it becomes by definition no more than a theory of unidirectionality, incapable of explaining or accommodating other pathways to grammaticality, especially things like lateral shifts or (as we shall see presently) reverses in direction. Although Diessel does not describe the types of grammatical marker deriving from demonstratives as undergoing lateral shifts, the process he identifies with demonstratives—themselves primitive grammatical markers, giving rise to other markers no more or less grammatical than their sources—is in fact a description of just such processes. Derivational pathways for Arabic grammatical markers with /š/, not necessarily sequential, may thus be envisioned as lateral shifts, probably arising in Proto-Semitic, pre-dating the sound changes š > h > ʾ. A precursor to several grammatical markers, formed with /š/ and a vowel and perhaps another consonant, having presentative value and meaning ‘here/there he/she/it/them is/are’ or indeed ‘his/hers/its/theirs’ or again ‘a/the/this/that/those’, is used first as a deictic device to single out something, thence to many other functions, including the Arabic interrogatives and indefinite determiner. This is shown schematically in Fig. 7.4. By such a scheme, many or all of these grammatical markers could have emerged at once or in quick succession, with each grammatical attribute reinforcing the other. The process is not necessarily linear, but can be multidimensional, difficult if not impossible to represent schematically on the two dimensions of a page. Regardless of its place in the multidimensional process, once an existential ši becomes associated with interrogation, the interrogative ši is then available to be pressed into service to form other interrogative forms. For example, it has appended itself to copulas, as in huwāš(i) and anāš(i) (Chapters 4 and 5), and it may double up

Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins

→

166

*šu(wa) *ši(ya) *šu(nu) *ši(na)

> huw(w)a > hiy(y)a > hu(n(n)(m(m)a > hin(n)a

↔

presentative/demonstrative

pronoun he/it she/it them (m) them (f)

*šV(C) ‘here/there (it is)’

↔

→

existential particle ‘there/it (m) is’ ‘there/it (f) is’ ‘there/they (m) are’ ‘there/they (f) are’

*šu? *ši? *šunu? *šīnu

> šī/ši

> šu?/aš? etc. > ši?/aš? etc. > šunu?/šnu? etc. > šīnu/šni? etc.

↔

interrogative ‘is there/it?’ ‘is there/it?’ ‘are there/they?’ ‘are there/they?’ ? indefinite determiner some/any/a

*šu *ši *šunu *šina

> šī/ši

FIG. 7.4 Sequence for the development of Arabic grammatical -š

with the interrogative ʾa (derived from ha < ša, probably originally an allophone of the alternate hal) to form the familiar vernacular Arabic interrogative aš—probably its original form.24 The output of this process yields interrogatives still in use in a wide range of Arabic varieties, as well as providing the all-purpose general interrogative and indefinite determiner forms ši. The former, from its beginnings as an interrogative clitic in polar questions, was available to associate itself with other interrogative particles to form argument queries questioning content rather than yes/ no propositions, giving rise to the many interrogatives now current, notably ʾaš ‘What is/are?’ The motivation for this is clear: as an enclitic interrogative, the Arabic -š/ši forms polar questions, as does ʾa alone and its analogous hal. As Arabic (and the Semitic languages in general) need no overtly expressed copula, the interrogative -š had and has no semantic reference of its own (nor do ʾa and hal), only imparting a sense of interrogation to the proposition to which it is attached. Originally an 24 The original form—or rather forms—could have been sensitive to gender and number, looking something like *ʾašu, *ʾaši, and *ʾašVnV. The Mehri interrogative hEśen ‘what’ lends credence to this view. Some Mehri roots with an initial /h/ correspond to roots with an initial sibilant (i.e. /s/) in other Semitic languages (Stroomer 1999: xx). Rubin (2008a: 79) derives the shorter form hE from a Proto-Semitic *ʾayy- and notes correspondences with Arabic, Ge’ez, Hebrew, and Akkadian forms. It was probably not *ʾayy- but *ʾa, derived from *ha, the Arabic retaining an analogous polar interrogative hal. Rubin’s precursor to the definite article might better be represented as ha(C) rather than ha(n). The correspondence /n/ $ /l/ is well attested. In this scenario, the Mehri is closer to an original form, which would have looked something like this: hE + śen (‘Q they’) < *ša + *-šVn. Notably, the forms ʾašu, ʾaši, and ʾašnu and analogues of those survive in modern Arabic vernaculars.

Degrammaticalization of ši

167

existential interrogative roughly meaning ‘Is it?’, it was free to move about in the sentence and, when appearing before the concept queried, available for adaptation as an indefinite determiner. What is more, as an interrogative with little meaning of its own, it was available for attaching to other words to form more complex interrogative ideas, querying such concepts as object, quantity, manner, time, or place, all of which require answers richer in informational content than merely a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. Interrogating an argument requires some content, whereupon the š may affix itself to content words like waqt ‘time’ to form waqtāš or šwaqt to mean ‘when?’ (= What time? < time + is it?), or with qadd ‘measure/quantity/size’ to form šqadd or qaddāš/ qaddēš ‘how much?’ (= What extent? < extent + is it?), as well as the nearly ubiquitous laš/lēš ‘why?’ (= For what? < lV to/for + what?).25

7.6 Degrammaticalization of ši A process emerges wherein particles either simultaneously or sequentially representing presentatives or demonstratives come to be used as independent personal pronouns, existential particles, interrogatives, and determiners. This probably began early before Proto-Arabic split off from other West Semitic languages. After the split, Arabic recruited its own 3rd person pronouns to perform as copulae when needed, freeing existential particles to function in other manners. Some dialects retained relics of an existential particle and much more commonly an indefinite determiner, which, for its part, as a marker of indefiniteness, began to acquire meaning as some unspecified object with the general meaning of ‘any’ or ‘some’. This early association as a marker of things may have led to the determiner itself being reanalysed itself to mean ‘a thing’. If that were so, the Arabic word šay is derived from the determiner and not the other way around. Indeed, were it not for the conventional supposition that the Arabic dialects derive from FA, there is no compelling reason to regard šayʾ as the original word for ‘thing’. It is neither a lexeme of the common Semitic stock (shared by other languages in the family,26 save Mehri, where the cognate śi is said to mean ‘thing’ but is most often used in the more general—read indefinite—meaning of ‘something’, ‘anything’, ‘some’ or ‘any’ (Wagner 1953: 28; Rubin 2010: 44)27) nor is it the exclusive word to carry that meaning in the dialects of Arabic that negate with -š, where, depending on the dialect, other words are commonly used: e.g. h·āgˇa (Yemeni, Egyptian, North African, and Maltese) or šaġle (the Levant), all in fact derived from words with other base meanings, varieties of Arabic each also possessing other synonyms (ʾamr,

In the littoral North African dialects ʿalaš (= For what? < ʿalā on/about + what?). Note e.g. the common Hebrew word for ‘thing’ dəbar in (7.2), itself possessing a wide range of meanings. 27 Wagner specifically states that it is used for the same purposes as Arabic baʿd ‘some’. ˙ 25 26

168

Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins

qadiyya, ġarad) for ‘thing’, just as FA itself does. It seems that the concept ‘thing’ is ˙ ˙ itself underspecified in both Arabic and the broader Semitic context, with each Semitic language and each Arabic variety adapting words from its own lexicon for the purpose of expressing it. Modern western dialects now possessing a reflex of the word šī for ‘thing’ may have acquired it recently owing to their coming into closer contact with eastern dialects, among them FA, after the advent of Islam, when the codified version of the language began to impose itself on the native dialects in the 4th/10th century and afterwards, or perhaps in the few centuries before it in Central Arabian odes, oracles, and oratory. This appears to fly in the face of the principle of ‘unidirectionality’ in grammaticalization theory, which it posits as a nearly immutable process. Yet it is precisely this very unidirectionality that limits it as a theoretical concept (Campbell 2001: 124–7), such that the few dissenting voices documenting movement in the opposite direction say that they are speaking of something else. Willis (2007), writing about such few cases, has this to say about it: Grammaticalization is unidirectional by definition . . . A change of an item from lexical to grammatical is grammaticalization, and a change from grammatical to lexical is not, hence grammaticalization always proceeds in the direction lexical to grammatical.28 The only falsifiable claim is not that grammaticalization itself is unidirectional, but rather that grammaticalization exists in the absence of a parallel reverse phenomenon, degrammaticalization, which, if it were attested, would occur when items with a formerly exclusively grammatical function changed into items with a (more) lexical function. (Willis 2007: 272)

He addresses three broad categories of degrammaticalization, two of which apply to Arabic. The first is precisely the move from an indefinite pronoun (what we are calling an indefinite determiner) to a substantive meaning ‘thing’. The usual process, from substantive to indefinite pronoun is quite common, appearing in 47 per cent of languages Haspelmath (2000: 182) surveys in his study of indefinite pronouns. This in itself may have lent to other researchers into the phenomenon of negating with -š in Arabic dialects the supreme confidence that they demonstrate in their categorical statements about derivations from šayʾun and similarities with French. Yet Willis (2007: 279–83) documents the reverse process: ‘This involves a counterdirectional . . . semantic change, plus category reanalysis from pronoun to noun. Both of these are processes of types typically associated with the change of generic noun > indefinite pronoun, but lead to the reverse outcome’ (p. 283). That is, it leads to degrammaticalization: indefinite pronoun > thing’ (p. 279).29

28 This leads Campbell (2013: 284–5) to suggest that the principle of grammaticalization as such is not a separate theoretical construct at all, but grammaticalization itself is simply a product of already wellunderstood processes, ‘with no special explanatory status of its own’. 29 See also the discussion of Willis’ findings in Norde (2009: 143–5).

Derivational pathways of grammatical ši

169

The second of only three types of degrammaticalization that Willis (2007: 282–9) documents is the change from a possessive pronoun to a generic noun meaning ‘property’. This change, too, has occurred in the Arabic processes of reanalysis of the Proto-Semitic 3rd person possessive pronoun to the genitive exponent šīt/šēt/šayt. Genitive exponents, generally being understood to mean ‘possession’ or ‘property’ are ‘built upon relative and demonstrative elements’ (Harning 1980: 19).30 Recall the Akkadian demonstratives and relative adjectives in Tables 7.3, 7.4, and 7.5: šuati, šiati, θūt(i), and θat. All antecedents of the process are thus available. This, too, seems to be a requisite of a process of degrammaticalization: ‘One form of the degrammaticalized lexical item is identical to the grammatical item from which it arose. This seems to be a requirement of syntactic lexicalization, since it is only if this requirement is met that the syntactic ambiguity underlying the reanalysis, and necessary for it, can arise’ (Willis 2007: 278). Whatever else may be said about the processes by which the existential particle, indefinite determiner, interrogative, negative, and the genitive exponent built upon ši emerge, and indeed about the principle of degrammaticalization that Willis outlines, it may certainly be said that this principle, as stated, applies. On the other hand, it patently does not apply to fictional derivations of ši from šayʾun, which must now be seen for what they are: linguistic folk etymologies.

7.7 Derivational pathways of grammatical ši It remains to determine a sequence by which the various functions of ši developed. Ultimately, any deductions about the origins of an indefinite determiner, interrogative, and negative function built upon ši can only be based upon similarities between those functional categories and other function words or even content words within the language. A complete history of the language can never be known, because most of its history is in fact prehistory, i.e. unwritten and therefore untraceable except in remnants of older processes extant in the language. However, while these function words or functional categories built upon š/ši do admittedly resemble the FA word for ‘thing’ šayʾun to the extent that they all share the consonant [š], they also resemble in form and function the Proto-Semitic 3rd person pronouns šV and šVnu, sharing in their presentative and demonstrative qualities, from which derive their existential, interrogative, indefinite, and ultimately negative functions. The sole criterion for judging between likely pathways from one to the other must be whether a plausible reconstruction can be posited for either one. In the conventional explanation—that

30 This may partially answer Harning’s lament: ‘We do not know where the analytic genitive emerged, nor which conditions favored its development’ (1980: 10). Where it first occurred may never be known, but a mechanism favouring its initial development may be seen in the degrammaticalization of the 3rd person pronouns.

170

Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins

Old Arabic

Neo-Arabic (1st/7th century forward)

⇒ mā + Verb + šī/ mVš + predicate ⇒ Verb + –š

⇒

šī ‘thing’ ⇒ mā + Verb + šī ‘thing’ (object)

Modern Dialects

šay

un

‘thing’ ⇒ šī ‘thing’ ⇒ interrogative ayy + šī ‘which thing’ ⇒ word + šī or šī + word (e.g., ayš / šu) ⇒

šī ‘thing’ ⇒ indefinite determiner šī + word

FIG. 7.5 Implicit derivational sequence of three functions from the word for ‘thing’

any functional ši derived from šayʾ—the implicit scenario for the derivation of three separate functions appears to proceed something like the pathways shown in Fig. 7.5, all envisioned as having come about within Arabic. Presented schematically, this looks untidy. The difficulties in supposing that the process applied to verbs and pseudo-verbs are discussed in Chapter 3. Briefly, they are these. First, there is no evidence that FA šayʾun was ever used as a negator of verbs, and little reason for supposing that it functioned as a negative polarity item. Second, if the vernacular analogue ši had been reanalysed as a negator for transitive verbs, i.e. with the word ‘thing’ appearing in the object position coming to be viewed as a negator, there remains no motivation for the same reanalysis with intransitive verbs. Respecting the derivation of ši as an interrogative, inasmuch as polar questions can be formed in Arabic and other Semitic languages simply by tone of voice, no motivations exist for introducing a question marker for reanalysing a word ‘thing’ to mark a question. Finally, while there may be some motivation, even a tendency, in languages for deriving an indefinite determiner from a substantive meaning ‘thing’ (Haspelmath 2000: 52–3, 182), there is no reason for believing that šayʾun is the original word for ‘thing’ in all Arabic dialects. Aside from that word itself in Arabic vernaculars, which may well be a late borrowing from FA, there appears to be no common word for ‘thing’ amongst the dialects of Arabic or even in the Semitic languages. What is more, under the common assumption, even the notion that those dialects negating with mā . . . š began by negating with mā alone cannot be demonstrated, and is itself based in the assumption that FA, or something like it, which negates without -š, is the parent form of the dialects, or at least older than they are. This too, of course, cannot be demonstrated. There is thus not even reason to believe that the technique of negating with pre-posed mā alone is earlier or more ‘conservative’ than negating with mā . . . š. According to such speculations, reflexes of the word for ‘thing’ must have been independently reanalysed to fulfil three separate functions: as an indefinite determiner ši, an interrogative ši, and a negator -š, along three separate, unrelated pathways. Although this is not impossible, the assumption is further flawed for its ignoring the existential particle, especially its analogous functions in the South Arabian languages. Khan points out that ‘3rd-person pronouns in Semitic languages often perform the semantic function of the verb “to be”’ (1984: 464). This is entirely consistent with the

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existential particle śī ‘there is’ of MSA languages (Simeone-Senelle 2011: 1108). It requires but a short step from an assertive existential ‘There is’ or simply ‘It is’ to an interrogative ‘Is there?’ and ‘Is it?’ thence to ‘It is not’ or ‘There is not.’ Consequently, the existential particle must pre-date any other derivation of the reflexes of śi. Meanwhile, language typology holds that ‘the interrogative function is always primary, and the indefinite function is secondary’ (Haspelmath 2000: 176) or that ‘indefinite pronouns are often based on unaccented question words’ (Diessel 2003: 635). Although this is helpful in deciding the position in which the indefinite determiner functions in the sequence, it does not necessarily solve the riddle. The MSA languages seem to suggest the opposite: in those, an existential particle, indefinite determiner, and what seems to be but an inchoate interrogative are present, the fully formed interrogatives built upon reflexes of /š/ appearing only in Arabic. Because of the presence of an existential particle and an indefinite determiner in those West Semitic languages, it appears that they must have preceded the fully functional interrogative of the Central Semitic Arabic. This must, however, be taken with caution. The Modern South Arabian languages are so little studied that the functions of śi are only now becoming known; indeed, in all of the instances we have seen, the indefinite determiner śi can be interpreted as remaining an existential particle. This continues to leave the problem of whence the word for ‘thing’ finally derives. It may be a latecomer, for it seems only vaguely to mean ‘thing’ rather than the more indefinite ‘something’ in Mehri (except perhaps when it appears as a borrowing from Arabic, when it is šī not śi (Stroomer 1999: 10–11)). The only alternative appears to be to accept the substantive meaning as primary, returning us to the original ill-supported supposition, lately buttressed by grammaticalization theory, which is bound to derive grammatical function from substantives and not the other way round. There being nothing to support it, and some reason to think otherwise, it seems best to permit the substantive to derive from an indefinite determiner, it being more satisfactory to assume a degrammaticalization sequence from a presentative/demonstrative or a 3rd person pronoun—which, as Fischer (2004: 719) has noted, is already fairly devoid of content—to an existential particle, it too being largely grammatical; thence to an indefinite pronoun and determiner, gaining some lexical content; finally becoming a content word meaning ‘thing’, which remains withal fairly underspecified. A tidier sequence than that in Fig. 7.5, accommodating the existential particles, nevertheless leaving the question of interrogatives and indefinite determiners open for the moment, is shown in Figure 7.6. Protosemitic 3rd pron šV ‘he/it’

West Semitic (MSA/Mehri) → existential particle → śi ‘it is’

Central Semitic (Arabic) → partitive → śi/ši ‘something/a’

FIG. 7.6 Sequence for the derivation of the substantive šV

substantive šī/šay un ‘thing’

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Negating with -š must be a later innovation. Once the -š began to be associated with negation, it would have become counterintuitive to attempt to extricate it from that meaning and to associate it with interrogation. Contrariwise, if its predecessor ši first indicated a polar question, the negative dimension of the question could easily have come to be associated with negation almost exclusively, as appears to have happened in most Arabic dialects where the feature persists. Negation with -š may easily derive from polar questions marked with an existential ši. This suggests a sequence: I

ši ʿandak ʿiyāl ‘It is that you have children’

A question may be formed from these with or without overt interrogative particles: II

(ʾa) ši ʿandak ʿiyāl ? ‘Is it you have children?’

As an existential particle querying the proposition of possession of children, ši can occur at the head of the phrase, as a tag at the end of the phrase, or immediately following the subject of the query. As Semitic languages in general can permit polar interrogatives without an overt interrogative particle, the ši is available for reanalysis as an interrogative particle: III

(ʾa)ʿand-ak ši ʿiyāl (Q)have-you ši children ‘Have you children?’

/ (ʾa)ʿand-ak / (Q) have-you

ʿiyāl children

ši ši

The polar interrogative marker being superfluous, it is available for reanalysis as an indefinite determiner: IV ʿand-ak ši ʿiyāl have-you some/any children ‘Have you any children?’ Any of the questions in any sequence may be negated with mā as either an affirmative or an interrogative: mā ši ʿand-ak ʿiyāl not is have-you children ‘It is not that you have children / Is it not that you have children?’ mā ʿand-ak ʿiyāl ši not have-your children is ‘It is that you do not have children / You haven’t children, is it?’ mā ʿand-ak ši ʿiyāl not have-your is children ‘You don’t have, it is, any children / You don’t have, is it, any children?’

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Once the ši is reanalysed as a negator, however, any of the constructions in which it had formerly functioned as an interrogative or an indefinite determiner would become associated with negation, such that even when one appears in a question, the question is construed as a negative: V

mā ʿand-ak ši ʿiyāl ‘You don’t have any children?’ ʾa ʿandak ši ʿiyāl ‘Don’t you have any children?’ ʿandak ši ʿiyāl ‘You don’t happen to have any children?’

In this respect at least, the facts confirm the fringes of theory: the indefinite determiner derives from the interrogative. They also contradict speculative conjectures based purely in superficial similarity; neither the indefinite determiner ši, nor the interrogative ši, nor the negator š is derived from the word for ‘thing’.

7.8 A reassertion of theory: Croft’s Cycle, not Jespersen’s Extricating explanation from theoretical presuppositions liberates it from preordained conclusions, intra-family comparisons permitting sounder descriptions than does forcing the facts into the straightjacket of theory. Nevertheless, a theoretical construct, if not yet a fully developed theory in itself, does apply to some Arabic dialects negating with -š. It is clear that these cannot have proceeded through a Jespersen’s Cycle, and yet the development of negation with -š does appear to have something of a cyclical nature to it. Indeed, it conforms to what has been called ‘Croft’s Cycle’ (Hansen 2011), precisely because it applies to the negation of existential predicates. Croft himself (1991: 6) calls it a ‘negative-existential cycle’, proposing three stages, all of which apply to aspects of the development of negation with -š in Arabic. In stage A, ‘the negative existential construction is the positive existential predicate plus the ordinary verbal negator’. In this stage, negating the existential particle ši of West Semitic surviving in proto-Arabic would be as simple as placing the negator mā before it, in mā šī. In an alternative to the question in (6.3b), the same question about coffee is repeated with a tag šī bih gahwa wallā bunn, wallā mā šī ‘Is there coffee or beans, or [is there] not?’ (Watson 1993: 294). In stage B, ‘there is a special negative existential predicate distinct from the verbal negator form, usually but not always a contraction or fusion of the verbal negator and the positive existential form’ (Croft 1991: 6–7). In the Yemeni and Maghrebi dialects of Arabic, the negator māšī is transparently derived from the negator mā and the existential ši. Recall that the answer to the question in (6.3a) ši maʿ-iš ʿiyāl ‘Is it that you have children?’ is māšī (Watson 1993: 266). Elsewhere, the negator is muš (< mā huš)/miš (< mā hiš).

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Stage C involves a return to A ‘in which the negative existential form is the same as the ordinary verbal negator’ (Croft 1991: 11). This too is found in the dialects of spoken Arabic in a rare and somewhat marked phenomenon, best documented in Cairene Arabic but occurring in other Arabic vernaculars as well. These look like trending toward stage C. In a departure from the usual verbal negation in Cairene Arabic, which proceeds with the discontinuous mā + verb + š, some indicative verbs may be negated with what had heretofore been the negator of the predicate: miš. Doss (2008: 88–9) gives many examples of such usage, among many others miš yinfaʿ ‘it can’t go’ (lit. yi-nfaʿ = ‘he/it is of use’; compare the discussion in (4.11)–(4.16)), offering some possible explanations. It may represent the expansion of a regional Egyptian usage of the negative particles: e.g. in the Šarqiyya province of the Nile Delta, verbs do indeed accept negation with miš, contrary to the principles of negation observed in other varieties of Egyptian Arabic (Woidich 1979: 93; 1980: 48, l. 37; cf. Soltan 2011b: 243, 262; 2012a: 119). It would be enhanced by the contact between miš and verbs in other legitimate environments. Finally, it may represent a cyclical change, wherein, as Doss suggests, ‘the continuous negative particle is gradually taking over the positions of the discontinuous one’, noting also that, ‘half a century ago . . . the continuous negative miš had a narrower expansion or had fewer usages than it has in present Cairene Arabic’ (2008: 89–90). Noting the same phenomenon, Brustad speculates that this type of negation, obligatory with the indicative verb indicating the future (e.g. miš h·a yinfaʿ ‘it will not be of use’), ‘may be part of a larger historical process that negation in Egyptian Arabic appears to be undergoing, in which the syntactic environments of /miš/ appear to be expanding at the expense of /mā . . . š/’ (2000: 285, n. 2). How the principle applies to other verbs in the limited class that are nowadays being negated with miš, the geographical spread of the phenomenon, and indeed its historical depth all await further investigation. Nevertheless, a motivation and model exists in Cairene Arabic, in metalinguistic negation, whereby an entire proposition is denied as being true. This can extend to verbs in the past tense; in fact any affirmative statement may be denied in such a manner, whether or not it contains a verb (Mughazy 2003; Alqassas 2012: 114–20 and passim): (7.5)

a. ana meš šuf-t el-mara ana šuft es-set I neg see-past.1s the-woman I saw the-lady ‘I didn’t see the woman—I saw the lady’ (Mughazy 2003: 1146) b. ana meš b-a?u:l la? I neg indic.say.1st.sing. no ‘I am not saying no’ (Mughazy 2003: 1147)

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175

Mughazy’s glossing of the indicative verb baʾūl ‘I say’ as a participle ‘saying’ is helpful in conceptualizing another use: negation of the indicative with preposed independent miš:31 (7.6)

miš ba-h·ibb aflām abyad w-iswid ˙ not I-like films white and-black ‘I don’t like black-and-white films’

A possible motivation for such unconventional negation is that, whereas miš is perfectly acceptable in negating a participle—indeed, in Cairene Arabic it is obligatory32—the participle h·ābib of the verb ‘to love/like’, while not at all impossible, is nevertheless not often used in current Egyptian parlance, and when it is, it carries more the meaning ‘I would like . . . ’ than ‘liking’. Thus the construct miš h·ābib would likely be understood to mean something like ‘I am not inclined to’, such that miš h·ābib atfarrag ʿalā aflām abyad w-iswid would mean ‘I don’t feel like watching black˙ and-white films’ as opposed to mā bah·ibbiš atfarrag ʿalā aflām abyad w-iswid ‘I don’t ˙ like watching black-and-white films’. Speakers using miš with the indicative of the verb may creatively be giving expression to subtle differences in aspect, using the indicative verb where its participle would be infelicitous but nevertheless negating it as a participle. That negation with miš already applies to future reference in the verb is in conformity with Croft’s assessment of the situation, wherein ‘one finds only gradual substitution of the negative existential for the verbal negator in only part of the verbal grammatical system’ (1991: 10). Negation of futurity in most Egyptian varieties of Arabic, proceeds thus: (7.7)

miš h·a yi-nfaʿ not future it-of.use ‘It won’t do’

Thus, in terms of Croft’s typology, metalinguistic negation and negation of futurity with miš would still be at the intermediate stage between B and C, wherein ‘a special negative existential form begins to be used for ordinary verbal negation’ (Croft 1991: 9,

31 These impressions are informed by a study I conducted in Cairo in the late 1990s, later abandoned, in which negation with miš the verb bi-y-h·ibb ‘to like/love’ was by far the most common to appear in the data. Younger urban women were more likely to use such negation than were men of any age. I did record one instance of a middle-aged woman in traditional garb, although an urban dweller, using it. It must further be stressed that such negation was by no means widespread, being in fact relatively rare compared to the more conventional mā . . . š technique. I can make no more assertions about the data than these. 32 It is not in Saʿīdi (i.e. Upper Egyptian) Arabic, at least not with all participles: ma taʿbanāš wallā h·āgˇa martak h·āmil ‘She’s not ill, or anything; your wife is pregnant’. For the euphemistic use of taʿbān (lit. ‘tired’) see Wilmsen (2010b); for the grammatically masculine predicate h·āmil ‘pregnant’, see Wilmsen (1999).

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emphasis added). Where it is beginning to apply to an unmarked indicative, it is entering into stage C proper. Doss sees the phenomenon as conforming to the cyclical development of negation in other languages and, lacking a convenient theoretical construct with which to identify it, specifically draws a comparison with negation in French. If, however, the situation in Cairene Arabic is indeed a language change in progress, it conforms much more comfortably to Croft’s Cycle than it does to the demonstrably different cycle operating in French. When it is recalled that an existential particle ši exists in southern Peninsular varieties of Arabic and at least some Syrian and North African varieties, this looks like a reasonable representation of the facts.33

7.9 A reaffirmation of an assumption: negating with mā is early A happy consequence of these scenarios is that they provide a sounder reason for viewing negation with the pre-posed mā alone as an early feature, not only of Arabic but also of proto-Arabic. The transformation of the interrogative mā into a negator was surely present in proto-Arabic, the interrogative having been inherited from Semitic (Pat-El 2012b: 26) or perhaps even from Afro-Asiatic (Faber 1991),34 the innovative negator mā occurring in Central Semitic and passing into Arabic.35 Nor would an interrogative mā vitiate the need for an interrogative ši. Rather, it would motivate it, for the mā queries an argument, asking ‘what?’, whereas the ši queries a proposition, asking a polar question ‘whether’. If mā became ambiguous, with the potential either for querying or negating propositions or arguments, an interrogative ši must have remained in proto-Arabic, giving rise to the interrogative aš, built upon another polar interrogative /ʾa/ and an enclitic interrogative -š, probably retaining sensitivity to gender and number with such forms as *ašu (m), *aši (f), and *ašun (pl). Reflexes of these would have lost their gender and number sensitivity and passed into various dialects of the language, both eastern and western, including the peripheral varieties, where indeed such forms and their analogues survive, each dialect

33 I have heard the same construction in Levantine varieties of Syria, Jordan, and Palestine, and even in those like the Beiruti, in which negation otherwise usually proceeds without -š, except when negating a nominal predicate, when miš may indeed be used, but there again, not always; mā is also often heard: miš bi-yi-ʿmil-u h·awāgˇiz ‘They don’t put up obstructions’ miš ʿam b-a-fham ʿalēk ‘I can’t understand you’ miš bi-yi-ʿigˇib-ha ‘it doesn’t please her’. Maltese translator/interpreter for the European Union Elgar-Paul Magro (pers. comm., June 2013) attests a similar construction to the latter in Maltese, generally used in contrast. 34 No consensus has been reached on the origin of the negator mā or the interrogator, for that matter; Rubin (2005: 50) is not convinced by Lipiński’s (2001: 467) explanation of it for Hebrew and of Faber’s reconstruction of an Afro-Asiatic origin. 35 Pat-El (2012b: 26, n. 31) notes its use as a negator in other Central Semitic languages (Canaanite and Aramaic).

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grouping, of course, also forming other interrogatives with š (Obler 1975: 54, 55; 1990: 139, 143; Versteegh 2004: 244).36 Assuming that the innovation occurred in proto-Arabic permits an early split in the proto-language between the parent varieties of all modern dialects of Arabic negating with a reflex of /š/ and those negating with a pre-posed mā alone, those generally not possessing an existential or indefinite determiner ši, perhaps having lost them, becoming the dialects of the central and eastern peninsula. Meanwhile, the other branch, the parent of the southern and western Peninsular dialects, retaining an existential, indefinite, and interrogative ši along with the negative mā, began the process of reanalysis of the indefinite determiner ši as a negator. Many Arabic dialects lack an existential particle ši, apparently substituting the 3rd person pronouns as copulae and the preposition fī or bi- ‘in’ to assume the existential function. Rubin observes that no verb ‘to be’ is reconstructable to Proto-Semitic, meaning that daughter languages were obliged to form copulae out of whatever was to hand, i.e. independent pronouns, presentatives, and existential particles (Rubin 2005: 41–6). In Arabic, those functional categories all appear to derive from similar roots. Thus, as proto-Arabic was differentiating a copular function for 3rd person pronouns and an existential function for fī, some of its varieties retained an older form of the pronoun in an independent determiner ši, which was subsequently lost by or was never present in the eastern branch but was retained in the western.

7.10 Conclusion While this explanation of Arabic interrogatives and negators, too, is ultimately based in similarity, it nevertheless enjoys the support of observable operations within Arabic dialects, presumably in aggregate preserving many of the steps as they occurred. Interrogatives formed with an existential ši by their nature pose polar questions, i.e. questions usually requiring an answer of ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It is easy to see how an existential particle could be converted into an interrogative, without need for reanalysis, in languages like English, simply requiring inversion of themes: it is > is it?, there is > is there?, but in Semitic languages not even requiring that. Eventually, however, a polar interrogative ši was reanalysed as a fully formed interrogative. While 36 The supposition that the [n] in forms like Iraqi sīnu and North African variants of šnu, along with that in various negative polarity items like the Maltese xein ‘nobody/nothing’, is a remnant of the nunation of the case system is also based purely in superficial similarity. Where remnants of nunation may be accepted with more confidence, such as the dialects of the Najd, they do not function in the same manner as nunation functions in the case system in FA. Rather, they serve as an adnominal relationship between an indefinite noun and a modifier (Ingham 1994: 49–54; Owens 2006: 104–5; Holes 2011: 80–3). They certainly bear no resemblance to their supposed appearance in the interrogatives. This by itself does not mean that the [n] in these interrogative forms cannot have been derived from nunation; it simply means that no traces exist of a hypothesized process from a nunated form to a phonetically reduced interrogative, say, from ayyu šay ʾin hu(wa) to šnu or šayn.

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that was happening or soon afterwards, it also would have begun—perhaps quickly— to lose its association with person, gender, and number. Much in the same manner as the interrogatives, the negative constructions derived from parent copular negators *mā hūš ‘he isn’t’ and *mā hīš ‘she isn’t’ have become nearly insensitive to gender in muš and miš, with most dialects applying either one indiscriminately to the masculine, feminine, or plural.37 The original interrogatives would have become unconstrained in the forms they retained in their reanalysis, leaving various person and number inflections as relics of an earlier state. The dialects where they continue to operate do retain some of the earlier forms while usually losing their association with gender and number, yielding the Arabic interrogatives based in the singular š or the plural šn forms.38 As an existential interrogative roughly meaning ‘Is there/it?’, the basic form ʾaš was free to move about in the sentence and was available to attach to other words to form more complex interrogative ideas, querying such concepts as object aš ‘what?’, quantity qadd-aš ‘how much?’, manner kīf-aš ‘how?’, time waqt-aš ‘when’, or cause l-aš ‘why?’—all of which require answers richer in informational content than merely ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. In the meantime, inasmuch as polar questions in Semitic languages do not need an overt interrogative, such questions being formed purely by tone of voice, the polar interrogative could easily be reanalysed as an indefinite determiner. This may have existed in Proto-Arabic or in early Arabic. The earliest attestation of a definite article in the Central Semitic languages is in the 8th or 9th century bc (Lipiński 2001: 274), about the same time that Arabs first appear in history. Almost all Arabic varieties possess the definite article,39 and all dialects (save FA and some Yemeni, for which latter, see Behnstedt 1985: 102–7) form interrogatives with reflexes of /š/; fewer negate with š, fewer still retain the West Semitic South Arabian indefinite determiner ši. At some early stage in the language or in Proto-Arabic itself, a split must have occurred between those dialects that retain an indefinite determiner and those that never had it or that subsequently lost it. The reanalysis of -š(i) as a fully formed negator will have come later than the use of ši as an indefinite determiner and as an interrogative, the inherent ambiguity of polar questions formed with an interrogative ši hastening the process. The usual Arabic negator mā would have negated the affirmative propositions of such questions or propositions. Such questions can often be interpreted as negative without changing the meaning at all or introducing but subtle changes of meaning. If some such questions came to be used with rhetorically 37 Some Gulf dialects are sensitive to gender in the operation of two analogous negators: mu, derived from mā hu ‘not he’, and mi, from mā hi ‘not she’ (Holes 1990: 73–4). 38 Tunisian dialects continue to distinguish gender in šnuwa, šniya, and šnuma, all meaning ‘what?’ (Gibson 2008: 596). Khairallah (2014: 75) documents a plural form eš-in in Zeitoun, Mt Lebanon (cf. Feghali 1928: 228). 39 That the Bukhara dialect of Uzbekistan Arabic has lost it (Fischer 1961: 263; Zimmermann 2009: 616) must be a later development arising from contact with Central Asian languages.

Conclusion

179

negative implications, the very polarity of yes/no questions would have permitted their reanalysis as negatives This may be as close as we can get to determining the age of -š as a negator. Its reanalysis as such may have emerged early in the pre-history of Arabic as a language in its own right, or indeed in its Proto-Arabic stage, or it may have emerged later, near the beginning of the Arabic diaspora. If it were the latter, whether it came some centuries before or in the decades immediately afterwards may remain a mystery. Nevertheless, here at last is some morphosyntactic evidence that the so-called ‘NeoArabic’ dialects are in fact ancient. This holds especially for the existential, interrogative, and indefinite ši, but also for the negators derived from it. With that, it becomes justifiable to regard eastern and western Arabic as originally two distinct varieties of Arabic, or, more correctly, two distinct dialect groupings. Within such a scenario, Arab folk wisdom gains some credence, as represented in the writings of the early grammarians and historians, that the southwestern peninsular varieties, labelled ‘Yemeni’, were indeed distinct. With the closer contact between the eastern and western dialect groupings in the centuries immediately preceding and following the diaspora, they would come to converge again.

8 On explanation and theory in Arabic linguistics The recorded history of Arabic is deep and extensive, and historical treatments of Arabic, with good reason, tend to focus on the rich legacy of the attested texts. Yet the Arabic language is clearly older than its written texts, and the only way to form reasoned judgements about its pre-literary development and its current state is through comparative studies, of living dialects, of their attested antecedents, and of related Semitic languages and dialects, in what Zaborski (1991) calls the Semitic dialect continuum.1 The deeper historical perspective that comparative Semitics accords to an analysis of Arabic adds an explanatory dimension unlikely to be obtainable within the confines of Arabic studies proper (cf. Zaborski 1995b: 273). A comparative perspective provides insight not only into the development of Arabic and of the Semitic languages as a group but also into human language in general.

8.1 Formal approaches to Arabic: mistaken, misplaced, and misguided Insights from the Semitic context are often missing from analyses of Arabic, just as Arabic is often missing from comparative language surveys. Worse, those that do attempt to incorporate insights from Arabic into broader schemes in linguistics often appear to be recruiting token elements from the language to support their cause, adducing them without much apparent knowledge of the varieties attested and with 1

He is referring specifically to the notorious difficulty in assigning to Arabic a place on the Semitic family tree, owing to Arabic ‘isoglosses . . . pointing both to the North West and to the South’, proving that ‘West Semitic languages constitute a dialect continuum in which the Arabic dialect group has an intermediate position between the North West Semitic and the South Arabian’ (Zaborski 1991: 365). Recent opinion on the matter echoes this (Hayajneh 2011: 760): ‘Pre-Islamic North Arabia can be considered as a speech community in which different Ancient North Arabian dialects and other languages have existed and sometimes overlaid each other’, at least in part because of a physical landscape with no ‘strong geographical barriers, which cause dialectal differences and demarcations [such that] the communication and exchange of linguistic innovations was not difficult . . . [Between] the first millennium bc and first few centuries ad [the region] can be considered a “linguistic area” . . . with several linguistic levels or strata of Arabian languages/dialects . . . spread over a wide region belonging to one origin.’

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little review of the scholarship pertaining to them. A recent minimalist treatment of grammaticalization and syntactic change (Roberts and Roussou 2003) is typical in this regard, adducing examples from Moroccan, Iraqi, and what the authors call ‘Classical’ Arabic. Each variety is discussed briefly,2 the latter only in their twice repeating the common assumption that the Moroccan Arabic indefinite determiner ši, which they call a generic noun used as an indefinite, derived ‘from Classical Arabic shahy? [sic]3 “thing” [functioning] as a pas-like second element of negation, as a nonspecific indefinite, as a wh-formative and as part of the interrogative marker’. Without demonstrating a mechanism, Roberts and Roussou conclude: ‘clearly, the original generic Noun was reanalysed as an indefinite D . . . , and the indefinite took on both wh- and negative functions’, noting also its use in ‘simple wh-words . . . sh-kun “who” and sh-nu “what” ’ (2003: 160).4 This comes in their brief discussion of an assumed operation of Jespersen’s Cycle in Moroccan Arabic. Whereas they may be forgiven for adopting the conventional view of interrogation and negation with -š in Arabic dialects, they are more culpable in their only other treatment of any variety of Arabic, a brief glance at spoken Iraqi Arabic. There, they attempt to show that some languages exhibit in-situ interrogation, adducing the phrase Mona shaafat meno ‘Mona saw whom?’ (2003: 31), while acknowledging ‘optional fronting’: meno Mona shaafat, reading this as a reduced cleft construction (2003: 32, n. 3). Leaving aside the question of which variety of Iraqi Arabic they are attesting, the graver question is whether the sketchy data they adduce are in any way accurate or comprehensive. In the first place, they appear to have the sequence backward from the original source (Wahba 1991)5 from which they draw their example, where it is the in-situ position that is optional: Wh-operators in Iraqi Arabic have the option of appearing in the Comp node or in their base position (in-situ) . . . the wh-operator appears in Comp and the questioned site is marked by a gap: meno Mona shaafit ? Who Mona Saw Who did Mona see?

2 Their index lists eight entries for Arabic (two for ‘Classical’ Arabic and three each for the other two varieties), while three European languages, English in 152 separate entries, French sixty-seven, and Greek 155, apparently attract the authors’ greatest attention. Even so, Arabic fares better than the many other nonEuropean languages that the authors mention, most of those, along with many an obscure European language (e.g. Sardinian), garnering only one mention apiece. A few common European languages merit repeated reference, but none nearly as many as the top three. 3 This error, repeated twice in their 2003 work (pp. 155 and 160)—an echo of the same misrepresentation in their earlier discussion of grammaticalization (1999: 1032)—is an honest mistake; it nevertheless serves to illustrate the authors’ thorough lack of familiarity with Arabic and the consequent peril in their adducing it in support of any generalizations about language. 4 Their sequence runs counter to the typologies of Haspelmath (2000: 176) and Diessel (2003: 635). 5 Wahba, especially her 1984 dissertation, is cited frequently in formal treatments of Arabic but not, it seems, in discussions of Arabic within other orientations.

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Like [some other languages] wh-operators may optionally occur in their base position: Mona Shaafit meno ? Mona saw whom?

(Wahba 1991: 253, emphasis added)

What is more, their reading of the wh-operator in Comp position as a reduced cleft construction is drawn from Ouhalla (1996), who there never actually adduces the phrase under discussion, instead commenting, in a footnote, about reduced cleft constructions as follows: It is plausible to conjecture that Iraqi Arabic wh-pronouns have evolved from the Classical Arabic combination man huwwa ‘who he’ found in reduced cleft wh-questions such as (iia), with the significant change that the strong pronoun huwwa has been replaced with the corresponding weak clitic pronoun –o . . . (i) man who (ii)

huwwa he

)

men who

o he

a. Man huwwa al-ladhii ra?ayta-hu? Who he the-one saw-you-him ‘Who have you seen?’ suft-o? (Iraqi Arabic) b. Meno Illi who that saw-you-him ‘Who have you seen?’

(Classical Arabic)

As shown in (iib), Iraqi Arabic, like many other spoken dialects of Arabic, also has reduced cleft wh-questions. However, it is important to stress that reduced cleft questions have properties . . . that differ radically from those of the wh-questions under discussion here. Reduced cleft wh-questions have two defining properties shown in (iib), the obligatory appearance of complementizer illi and the obligatory appearance of a resumptive clitic pronoun in the questioned position, neither of which is found or even possible in the type of question discussed here. (Ouhalla 1996: 683, n. 5)

In a much more detailed discussion of interrogation in Iraqi Arabic, Sterian (2011) provides reason to doubt the implication in Roberts and Roussou that the word order in Mona shaafat meno is the normal, unmarked state. She draws the distinction between bare interrogatives (as in who, what, where, how many) and discourselinked or ‘D-linked’ interrogatives (as in which person, which table, which city). The difference between them is that ‘with which-phrases, the set of felicitous answers is limited to the set of objects which both speaker and hearer have in mind. It is in this sense that wh-phrases are discourse-linked. However, no such requirement is imposed on bare interrogative expressions . . . which-phrases seem to function pronominally in that they are “familiar” rather than novel’ (Sterian 2011: 16). She provides examples of both:

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Bare interrogative expressions (8.1) a. minnū šeftyi ? who saw.2FS ‘Whom did you see?’ b. šinnū šeftyi what saw.2FS ‘What did you see?’ D-linked interrogative expressions mraya šeftyi which woman saw.2FS ‘Which woman did you see?’

(8.2) a. yā

b. yā film šeftyi which film saw.2FS ‘Which film did you see?’ Contrary to the assertion in Roberts and Roussou (and for that matter in Wahba), Sterian maintains that the in-situ construction is ill-formed and that the well-formed alternative is that which Roberts and Roussou read as a reduced cleft (Sterian 2011: 27): (8.3)

Suha minnū šāfit bi-l-mat·ʿam Suha who saw.3FS in-the-restaurant ‘Whom did Suha see in the restaurant?’

This is nothing new: a full fifty years before Roberts and Roussou, Van Wagoner (1949: 23) stated the principle: ‘question-asking words . . . follow the very same pattern in Iraqi and English.’ Without prejudice to Roberts and Roussou’s overall argument, their cursory glances at Arabic can do nothing to advance it. The data themselves are not entirely incorrect, but their interpretation is suspect. For example, had they wished to make an argument for in-situ interrogation in an Arabic dialect, they would have done better to discuss Egyptian varieties, which, unmarked, do indeed leave the interrogative in situ, although it is not clear how this may have sustained the argument, as most dialects of Arabic in fact front the interrogative.6 To be fair, Roberts and Roussou cannot be blamed for their incomplete grasp of Arabic; they are merely presenting analysis they have gleaned from published sources. That, however, is in itself part of the problem: they consult only two sources about Arabic (Wahba 1991 and Ouhalla 1996),7 both of them writing from within the 6 This is reckoning without polar interrogatives, which in any case do not need to be overtly expressed, and, when they are, may in some dialects appear almost anywhere. 7 One of their sources, Wahba, a native speaker of Egyptian Arabic, has in fact written about in situ interrogation in Egyptian Arabic (Wahba 1984; Kenstowicz and Wahba 1983).

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same theoretical orientation in which Roberts and Roussou position themselves. This consists of ‘formal’ or ‘theoretical’ linguistic analyses more or less loosely falling into the so-called ‘Minimalist Program’, an outgrowth and to some degree a repudiation, or at least a refinement, of the so-called ‘Principles and Parameters’ body of theory, itself a corrective to what was then called ‘Government and Binding’ structure, which first began as ‘Generative’ or ‘Transformational Grammar’, all falling within the scope of researching a posited ‘Universal Grammar’ bequeathed to humanity as part of its genetic heritage. This despite the ready availability of some standard reference grammars on Iraqi Arabic (presenting the dialect of Baghdad) that show that the unmarked position for interrogatives is phrase-initial (Erwin 1963/2004; AlKhalesi 2001). While those grammars do not address the interrogative minu querying an object, instead attesting its use in querying the subject, e.g. minu dagg il-bāb ‘Who knocked on the door?’ (Erwin 1963/2004: 337), or a predicate: minu huwwa? ‘Who is he?’ (Al-Khalesi 2001: 180), they nevertheless show the interrogative at the head of the phrase.8 Ignoring the scholarship of Arabic appears to be a defining feature of works in the outgrowths of the generativist tradition.9 Describing this failure to consult the vast literature on Arabic (and other Semitic languages) as the ‘greatest drawback of linguistics in the late twentieth century’, while writing at the beginning of the twenty-first, Goldenberg (2002) laments: It is impossible and useless to try to evaluate individual references to Semitic languages in discussions of general-linguistic theoretical issues. Some of them are rather revealing, many of them just marginally recall some commonly-known phenomena of Hebrew or Arabic, most of them are not based on actually attested evidence, and nearly all of them show total unacquaintance with the extensive grammatical literature on the relevant languages. (2002: 26)

Aguadé makes the same complaint: ‘to ignore research done by Arabists seems to be a common trend in their publications’ (2010: 97). Ironically, Goldenberg offers his observations in a chapter immediately preceding a contribution extolling what its author claims to be the early and consistent contributions of Semitic studies to the transformational grammar enterprise (Malone 2002). If Goldenberg’s complaint applies particularly to studies in the larger linguistic tradition that cast a broad net to capture a wide, if shallow, sampling of languages, unfortunately it can also apply to formal linguistic analyses of Arabic alone.10 Other attestations of interrogative minu are Erwin (1963/2004: 292, 382, 383, 387) and Al-Khalesi (2001: 93, 97, 122, 135, 181), all of them phrase-initial; Van Wagoner adduces phrase-initial interrogatives minuu haaða ‘Who [is] this?’, wayn ilmah·at·t·a ‘Where is the railroad station?’, and šinuu triid? or štriid? ‘What do you want? (1949: 23). 9 Nor is this ignorance limited to the Arabic literature; Haspelmath (1998: 317) observes: ‘work in this tradition [generative studies of syntactic change] generally takes no account of the functionalist literature.’ 10 Ouhalla is himself guilty of this when he assumes that the Iraqi interrogative meno is derived from classical Arabic, in what looks to be a default supposition, deriving all dialect features from an FA parent, 8

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Criticizing such theoretical studies of Arabic in particular, Aguadé maintains that such studies are frequently conducted by ‘linguists or philologists often not acquainted with Arabic dialectology, eastern Arabic dialects or Arabic/Semitic philology’, adding, ‘These studies are often of very theoretical nature and show a surprising ignorance concerning the existing bibliography (especially older publications) [at times citing the dialects] only to reaffirm some linguistic theories’ (Aguadé 2010: 97). Many such studies of Arabic often incestuously limit their literature citations to studies sharing their same theoretical framework.11 This may be a reflection of their basic assumptions both about language and about Arabic. For they presume to analyse or at least include in their analyses FA, their adducing comparative data from Arabic dialects apparently intended as a foil against which to compare or contrast their conclusions about that variety. What is more, when buttressing their arguments with dialect data, they often (although not always) compare unrelated Arabic dialects. Two problems immediately arise with this approach. Aguadé points out the first: ‘since nobody has Modern Standard Arabic as mother tongue, such a comparison is worthless’ (2010: 98). This despite the diametrically opposite claim, stunning in its inaccuracy and potential to mislead linguists unfamiliar with Arabic, in one of the most recent treatments of Arabic within the framework of a formal theory of linguistics by Fassi Fehri (2012): The language described [in this book] is basically Standard Arabic, although dialect (or colloquial) varieties are also brought in . . . for the sake of describing and identifying microvariation . . . Standard Arabic is the language of more than 350 million speakers around the globe (including 22 Arab states in which it is the main or unique official language), more than 60 million internet users, and more than 30 million social network users. (2012: xvi)

with no reference to substrate language or common Semitic sources. The interrogative in question might arise from either. In a study of the Akkadian influences on Aramaic, Kaufman’s observation about an interrogative in Mesopotamian Semitic languages could point either way: ‘Babylonian and Mandaic declarative sentences are made interrogative when preceded by the particle mî. This particle may well derive from the identical Akkadian particle –mī, itself probably a development of the interrogative pronoun mīnu’ (1974: 136). 11 This is more apparent in articles about Arabic within the formal or generativist tradition than in books adopting that perspective; even so, references to the literature in books do not build their arguments on data gleaned from literature outside the tradition, instead sporadically mustering such works to the cause of advancing their own peculiar insights, although most often drawing their data from or making reference to works within the generativist tradition. Curiously, Aoun et al. (2010) and Benmamoun (2000) list most of their references to the broader Arabic literature in their discussions of negation. Otherwise, formal linguistic accounts of Arabic and most others, that we may for the sake of convenience classify under a ‘functional’ orientation, in the words of van Kemenade, ‘represent two camps, which, to put it mildly, take less than full account of each other’s work’ (1999: 998).

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This is just plain wrong; there is no empirical evidence to support the assertion that all the c.350 million speakers of Arabic as a native language are able to use this ‘Standard Arabic’ with equal facility—indeed, the consensus would tend toward the opposite (e.g. Parkinson 1991; Haeri 2003). In the first place, of those 60 million internet users, of which the 30 million social media users would be a subset, a large percentage write in some admixture of dialect and standard Arabic (den Heijer 2012: 8), some writing mostly in their native dialects, even transliterating their Arabic with Latin letters, employing numerals to represent sounds for which no Latin representations exist.12 Whatever such a practice can be called (some call it 3arabizi (written as such), a blending of the words ʿarabi ‘Arabic’ and inglīzi ‘English’), it has not yet been recognized as a standard (Yaghan 2008: 39, 46). Secondly, with an estimated 30 per cent illiteracy rate in the Arab world as a whole, it is simply impossible that Fassi Fehri’s Standard Arabic, which is largely a written medium, can be the language of those native speakers of Arabic who can neither read nor write. Even people who can read and write, who would constitute the greater proportion of urban populations in the Arab world, all acquire a local vernacular dialect of Arabic as their mother tongue, only beginning to learn this so-called ‘Standard Arabic’ in school some time around the age of 6, most never learning to declaim aloud in that variety in anything more skilled than halting performances, generally deviating from prescriptive rules (Badawi 2002: 160). One might almost think that Fassi Fehri had a different variety of Arabic in mind from that which is usually labelled ‘Standard Arabic’, were it not for his immediately contrasting that variety with ‘dialect (or colloquial) varieties’. The driving imperative of formal linguistics has been to account for child acquisition of a native language. FA can only be of assistance to such an initiative for the historical perspective it might lend to an understanding of the development of the language, even there, perhaps only in contrasting or corroborating trends active in spoken Arabic or in providing supporting evidence for the development of Semitic languages as a whole. Yet formal linguistics almost militantly opposes adopting diachronic perspectives on language (van Gelderen 2011). In one sense, this is appropriate, as children learn their language in the ahistorical present, thoroughly unaware of the history of the language(s) they are acquiring. Nevertheless, in attempting without historical perspective to account for the structures that Arab children are acquiring, formal linguists deny themselves a powerful analytical tool, thereby risking failure in the attempt adequately to describe and to explain the facts,

12 Contrary to what Fassi Fehri asserts, den Heijer specifically states that ‘on internet forums, chat rooms and Facebook pages . . . written Arabic can appear as a mere echo of oral performances’ (2012: 8). Yaghan (2008: 44–6) reports that the use of vernacular Arabic transcribed with Latin letters is widespread in text messaging and internet fora, where it is ‘mainly used for slang [sic], rather than classical Arabic’ and that it is beginning to manifest itself in other media, such as graffiti, movie posters, and CD cover art.

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descriptive adequacy and explanatory adequacy being another foundational imperative of the field. This is certainly true of formal linguistic attempts at describing and explaining the various manifestations of reflexes of /š/ in those dialects in which they appear. For, appeals to FA aside, the second difficulty with formal approaches to the problem is precisely that they usually persist in drawing comparisons between disperse dialects, when most Arab children actively acquire only one or a few closely related dialects of Arabic.13 In a recent ambitious contribution to some of the enduring questions in formal linguistics from a perspective informed by Arabic, Aoun et al. (2010: 1) hint at this, subtitling the first section of their introductory essay ‘The Arabic language(s)’; likewise Ouhalla (2002: 301) speaks of evidence from ‘the Arabic languages’, all, however, without exploring the implications of the reality that they so succinctly describe. Apparently wishing to produce a grammar of Arabic writ large, they lose sight of the truth that, from the perspective of language acquisition theory, there must be many grammars of Arabic (cf. van Kemenade 1999: 1004). Indeed, from the perspective of a formal linguistics attempting to account for child language acquisition, there are, properly speaking, as many grammars as there are child learners of the language. To those children, it makes no difference how speakers of their language use it in the next dialect region over, or even the next province, or the next neighbourhood. What matters is how the language they are acquiring is used in their immediate vicinity, whatever that happens to encompass. It follows that comparative formal analyses of Arabic have little to contribute to accounting for child acquisition of a local dialect. Instead, the goal of formal attempts at explaining the syntax of interrogation and negation in Arabic dialects appears not to be to account for children’s acquisition of their native dialects as much as it is to describe some unified state of the language, from which the present variability derives. This is how Benmamoun (2009: 391) describes the goals of formal syntax studies: The first goal is to explore syntactic principles and properties that have crosslinguistic manifestations and validity and that may help determine the nature of the syntactic dimension of the, possibly innate, human linguistic faculty, i.e., Universal Grammar. The second goal, intimately related to the first, is to provide in-depth descriptions, analyses, and comparisons of different languages, so that one can determine the extent and limit of language variation and how that variation relates to the basic Universal Grammar core.

In that respect, its goals are much the same as those of a historical linguistics of Arabic, whose single goal, leaving questions of innateness and universality aside, is to 13 As part of their linguistic ‘competence’ (another preoccupation of the formal field), however, Arab adults can certainly recognize—and to some degree comprehend, imitate, and even acquire—the major features of other regional dialects and local sociolects, especially those immediately adjacent to their own (Ibrahim 2012).

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posit a proto-language and to give ‘an adequate historical account of . . . the rules by which a proto-language develops into its daughter varieties’ (Owens 2006: 8).14 It is these daughter varieties whose grammars children acquire as their native languages. With the comparative method—the principal tool of historical linguistics— variability is vitally important to understanding the historical development of Arabic as a whole, and as such may be instrumental in forming an adequate description and explanation of a grammar of the entire language. Perhaps inadvertently, formal accounts of Arabic apply the same method synchronically, albeit yielding unsatisfactory results.15 For, if formal analysts of Arabic syntax permit themselves to compare dialects, they should in principle compare all Arabic dialects or at least all related dialects sharing a particular feature. That they do not becomes immediately apparent in counter-examples from closely related dialects, some of which we shall consider presently, casting doubt upon formal linguistic accounts of Arabic. In its increasingly complex formulizations of movement, feature checking, spellout rules, and merges, among a raft of other operations, it appears that formal linguistics has lost sight of its principal theoretical concern. Either that, or formal linguists are actually interested in other things but conceal their interests under the guise of explaining child acquisition of language, as their theoretical framework requires them to do. In attempting to account for the ever-increasing discoveries of complex dissimilarities between the grammars of world languages, formal linguistics has trapped itself in a gyre of ad hoc explanations in order to force disparate languages into a theory that applies best (if it applies at all) to western European languages (McRae 2013: 54).

8.2 Formal approaches to grammatical ši Where negation in Arabic dialects is concerned, this is especially evident. Formal studies of Arabic, which—as well they may—seem particularly concerned with negation, have nevertheless failed to describe and adequately to explain the operation of -š in negation—why some dialects use it and others do not, why variability exists within and between the dialects that do use it, and ultimately how the operation arose in the first place. Amongst recent works formally addressing the problem of ši there is 14 Fischer (2004: 712, 732, n. 4) proposes that historical linguistics should do both, contributing to ‘the theory of grammar[and to]a clearer understanding of the “language blueprint”[and to]a correct description of language data as they occur historically, and towards a deeper understanding of how the language or, more precisely, the language output, changes’. She maintains that ‘an investigation of the historical process is necessary in order to reach an understanding of a change’ (her emphasis). 15 Consider Norde’s observation: ‘it seems . . . that generativists and functionalists use the term “diachrony” for different things. In the functionalist tradition, diachrony refers to a generalization over successive generations of speakers, whereas generative linguists generally view language change as a function of language acquisition, which of course is inherently synchronic’ (Norde 2009: 95).

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no agreement, except that all analysts appear to share bewilderment as to what to do with it. A sterling example of this comes from Fassi Fehri (2012), who, although he purports to address key features and parameters of Arabic, never directly addresses interrogation or negation. In his entire book he rarely adduces a negator, and when he does it is from FA, mostly in discussions of indeterminate noun phrases (2012: 160–2, 169–71, 205–31); he never notices, or at any rate does not attempt to explain, the correspondences between the indefinite determiner ši of his native Moroccan Arabic (the dialect to which he most often resorts—when adducing dialect data at all, which is rarely) and negation in that same variety. He does, however, notice a difference between FA (his Standard Arabic or SA) and Moroccan in the expression of indeterminacy: (8.4)

a. jaʔa rajul-u-n maa came man-NOM-N some b. ja ši rajel came some man ‘Some man came’ (2012: 171, 209) c. ja ši weld came some boy ‘Some (non-identified) boy came’ (2012: 162, 226)

Fassi Fehri explains: Assuming then that the affix -n realizes the head D . . . then N incorporates into D via N-to-D movement. In minimalist terms, we can say that N has an uninterpretable D feature, the indeterminate feature, which is only interpretable on D. The unvalued feature then prompts Nto-D movement in CA/SA. If -n-/-m [i.e. nunation/mimation] realizes the indeterminate feature in head D, and maa is realized in a Spec, then the change is a known one, i.e. a reanalysis from Spec to H . . . This process of reanalysis has taken place in CA and a remote stage of (Central) Semitic. It is generally agreed that remote stages of marking (in) determination were characterized by mimation only, to the exclusion of definiteness, which was introduced only as a late innovation. If so, then Semitic indefinites are more remote than their definite correlates. Indefinite determination is then realized as a head affix in CA/SA, but such a head is either empty in MA, or a full (quantifier) head in the ši ‘some’ case. The ‘some’ quantifier is a specifier in CA/SA. The spec/H alternation is then firmly established as a Semitic micro-variation. (2012: 211)

Seeing that Semitic was characterized at some early stage by mimation—which Fassi Fehri interprets as a reduction of the indeterminate pronoun mā, associated with indefinite meaning, and without exploring the possibility that this indeterminate mā began in the interrogative mā—he concludes that mimation became nunation in his CA/SA, suggesting that the parent of this CA/SA actually retained the earlier form while at the same time adopting the innovative indeterminate marking. This may

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well be true, but he has not thereby explained the origins of the Moroccan ši. Nor does he address its other qualities, neither in Moroccan nor in other dialects where it appears. This is no doubt because his primary concern is to account for the functioning of ‘Standard Arabic’, where grammatical ši does not appear. Ouhalla (2002) attempts a unified statement of the facts. Labelling ši a ‘variable’, he explains: ‘that sh(i) can be related to a broad range of operators implies that it has no inherent content, negative or otherwise.16 This is consistent with the view . . . that it spells out a variable’ (2002: 317–18). Nevertheless, he has little more to say about its origin or development than to express the common assumption that it ‘probably derives historically from the Classical Arabic noun šayʾ “thing” ’ (p. 301). Likewise Benmamoun: ‘As is well-known, the negative element š evolved from the word šayʔ (thing)’ (2000: 77). Attempting a guess at its history, Aoun et al. (2010: 106–7) also assume that it ‘evolved from the word šayʾ . . . [and that] compared to ma, š seems to have evolved relatively lately to reinforce the negative ma, very much on a par with the situation in Romance’.17 That all three of these studies adopt the standard assumption does not by itself vitiate their analyses, but it certainly impedes them and leads them along a garden path (to use more of the quaint terminology of formal linguistics). For example, Ouhalla—while incidentally and apparently almost by accident coming close to providing an account of some of the features of -š, observing both its indefinite and interrogative properties in Moroccan Arabic—nevertheless treats its quality as a negator independently of its other functions, omitting even to query what may relate these disparate functions together, ending by naming -š not merely a variable, but a ‘dummy variable’ (2002: 318). In discussing its interrogative properties in polar questions, Ouhalla is at a loss to explain the status of wa in the question from Moroccan Arabic waš qrat Nadia l-ktab? ‘Has Nadia read the book?’ in any case 16 Alqassas (2012: 85) comes to precisely the same conclusion but for different—rather baffling—reasons. He maintains that it ‘is not inherently negative since it cannot appear alone and since it can only appear with a morphologically weak ma’. What he means by ‘morphologically weak’ is that with predicates negated with mā alone without an enclitic -š, stress falls upon the mā. In those negated with -š, the stress shifts to the syllable containing -š. Alqassas appears to think that this fact has significant implications for the syntax, when it is actually a purely phonological phenomenon. The fact is that in some dialects, a word ending in a twoconsonant cluster or a long vowel—as many words to which -š affixes will do—shifts stress to that syllable. It is as simple as that. Khairallah (2014: 75–6) notes that the speakers of the Zeitoun dialect of Mt Lebanon retain the stress on the antepenult when negating with /š/. In either case, the only possible syntactic consequence could be that the entire phrase ma . . . š is treated as a single lexical unit. This oversight is not what is baffling; rather it is that Alqassas contradicts himself on the same page (2012: 85, n. 28): ‘we still have the problem of how to explain why -š can appear alone in negative imperatives.’ Regardless, as far as the origins of -š are concerned, that -š at least originally bore no negative content has now been demonstrated to be true; it is (or was) inherently existential, interrogative, or indefinite, and, pace Alqassas, it did appear alone. Nevertheless, as an ‘operator’ of its own, it now very much does bear negative content. Its variability of position in the sentence comes as a relic of its origin as an interrogative clitic appearing either before or after the word in question, regardless of which part of speech that word had assumed. 17 So too do they justify their schemata of negation in Arabic by drawing an analogy with ‘similar analyses of Standard French where negation is realized by two elements that can sandwich the verb’ (Aoun et al. 2010: 104).

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deciding: ‘the exact status of wa- is not clear, but it is not implausible to treat it . . . as the spellout of the Q-operator’ (2002: 304). In fact it is the very interrogative itself, and neither it nor the -š is a dummy variable. Instead, the entire construct is a remnant of the older copular interrogative huwāš (Chapter 5). Postulating a series of intermediate steps from some abstract Q-operator to a surface manifestation supported by ‘lexical material’ is thus superfluous. Similarly, when attempting to account for the inadmissibility of placing the full form ši at the head of the phrase in the Lebanese Arabic ʾatal shi Karīm l-mmāsle? ‘Did Karim kill the actress?’ (his 10a), or ʾatal Karīm l-mmāsle shi? (10b), but not *ši ʾatal Karīm l-mmāsle?, the case is patently not as Ouhalla states it: The distribution of the particle sh(i) in Lebanese Arabic yes-no questions can be made consistent with the view that it spells out a propositional variable and that it is located on the left-edge of the structure of yes/no-questions . . . The particle sh(i) starts on the left-edge of the question, as in Moroccan Arabic. However, being a clitic, it needs to be supported with lexical material. Moroccan Arabic makes use of the Q-particle wa for this purpose, with the consequence that the variable particle remains/surfaces in-situ. Lebanese Arabic does not have an equivalent of the Moroccan Arabic Q-particle wa, and therefore must resort to a different strategy to support the variable particle. One possibility is that Lebanese Arabic makes use of (rightward) phonological cliticisation onto the verb (10a) or onto the last constituent of the sentence (10b). A more plausible scenario, however, is that (10a) is derived by verb-movement to the position of the variable particle, say C, and (10b) by movement/pied-piping of the whole IP to SpecC. (2002: 305)

Ouhalla would evidently encounter difficulty in explaining that it can appear sentence-initially without supporting ‘lexical material’ in Yemeni and Levantine Arabics (see (3.7), (3.8), (6.2), (6.3), (6.5), and (6.10)) and for that matter in Moroccan (Caubet 1993a: 186; 1993b: 280). Yet the history of the particle provides an adequate explanation of the facts. That ši functions here as a ‘propositional variable’ is without question, in that it is interrogating a binary truth-value, either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. So too may it ‘make use of rightward cliticisation onto the verb’ and ‘onto the last constituent of the sentence’, just as the interrogative -š in huwāš has made use of rightward cliticization onto the erstwhile copula in the Moroccan waš, for the interrogative -š can attach itself as an enclitic to whatever it queries.18 The assertion that an interrogative usually positions itself at the left edge of the question is also correct, but not for the reason Ouhalla imagines. To illustrate his point, he introduces a third question from Iraqi Arabic (again, citing Wahba 1991); 18 What is more, the interrogative šu can be placed initially as a wh-exclamative: šu? ʾatal Karīm l-mmāsle? Because it may be interpreted this way, it is now possible to speculate that this is in fact a survival of an earlier inflected form of the interrogative, meaning something like ‘Is it that Karim has killed the actress?’ Indeed, in light of such questions as ši maʿak mas·āri? in Levantine Arabics, it is not certain that placing ši at the head of the question about Karim, giving the query the same meaning, would be ungrammatical.

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but his third example is not a polar question, which proves misleading. The question is actually two in one, in what appears to be a typically formal construct and not something someone might actually say. With Ouhalla’s notation, it is this (2002: 308): (8.5)

sh-tsawwarat Mona Ali ishtara VAR-thought Mona Ali bought ‘What did Mona think Ali bought?’

she-no? VAR-what

Neither of the two interrogatives formed with ši in this example, comprising two constituent parts of the sentence, are polar questions: š-tsawarat Mona? ‘What did Mona think?’ and ʿAli ištara šīnu? ‘Ali bought what?’ About these, Ouhalla asserts: ‘in the light of the discussion so far . . . , sh(i) is best analysed as the spellout of the variable bound by the Q-operator rather than of the Q-operator itself ’ (2002: 305). On the contrary, it is the interrogative itself. The first of these is a variant of the independent Iraqi form as ašu (< aš huwa ‘what is he/it?’), until recently surviving in Baghdadi Jewish Arabic, which, when preposed, appears as aš or š- and is ‘prefixed to an imperfect or perfect verb or participle in interrogative sentences: šdatsawwi [i.e. < ašu da tsawwi] “what are you doing?” [cf. áš-asawwi ‘what shall I do?’ (Mansour 2006: 240)], šgəttəlla “what did you tell him?”, šmākəl əlyōm “what did you have to eat today?” ’ (Abu-Haidar 2006: 230). The second is of course the emblematic Iraqi interrogative pronoun šinu. Both query an argument rather than a proposition, and they share the same historical antecedents as the Moroccan šnu, škun, and šmen that Ouhalla adduces (2002: 302). Ouhalla is close to being correct about the functions of the reflexes of ši as an indefinite determiner, an interrogative, and a negator; he has thus, after a fashion, achieved descriptive adequacy, although he makes it unnecessarily difficult to descry. He simply lacks a unifying historical account of how they came to function in all of these manners.19 By that, he fails at explanatory adequacy. Instead he is reduced to labelling ši a variable—which it is, if what is meant by ‘variable’ is that it varies in function and position in the sentence—but that does not explain much. His and other formal analyses seem to take as an assumption that Neg usually operates on a verb, and in the absence of a verb, it must bind to something else (Ouhalla 2002: 307–8). But as an original interrogative, it can operate on anything. In that regard, it may be helpful to label it a variable. But it seems that by calling it that, it simply means that we are admitting that we do not know what it is. If we know its origins, however, we can see that while it is indeed a particle of varying uses, we can also see that each of these uses has undergone an operation of its own and has

19 Benmamoun also comes close when he says, ‘Assuming with Ouhalla . . . that we are dealing with the same element . . . , I would like to argue that [in] Moroccan Arabic . . . negation is made up of an interpretable feature realized by ma and an existential quantificational feature realized by š, which has evolved to express the existential operator part of negation, positive quantifiers, and questions’ (2000: 77).

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become independent. The variables do have a single origin in the history of the language, but they no longer share a single origin in the syntax. This conclusion appears to be that which formal analysts are trying to reach. Yet, by neglecting to take into account the relevant historical facts about indefinite, interrogative, and negative ši in the Arabic dialects, all such formal accounts are, by their very nature, inadvertently ad hoc, for by failing to discern the relationship between all of these variables of ši they are at best achieving a partial accounting for the facts, either unwittingly or by design addressing an incomplete data set, always running the risk of finding themselves obliged to construct exceptional rules for counter-examples as they arise.20 Worse, as Harris and Campbell note, ‘all share an orientation (to a greater or lesser degree) of championing a particular version of generative theory and selecting (or squeezing) the data of syntactic change to fit the theory’ (1995: 35). Nowhere is this more on display than in the struggle with the discontinuous negator mā . . . š in Benmamoun (2000) and again in Aoun et al. (2010). Observing that the independent form of the negator is maši, these analysts assume that the past tense verb merges with the negator, while in the present tense it need not do so. The evidence for this is limited, coming from only a few dialects, and does not account for all the possibilities within the language. For example, it applies fairly neatly to intransitive verbs, e.g. ža ‘came’ or bivalent verbs, i.e. those extending to a single object, e.g. katab ‘wrote’. Yet the data become more complex when pronominal objects are brought forward for consideration. In such instances, it is not simply the verb that, according to the terms of analysis, ‘merges’ with negation, but the pronominal object as well. Consider an example from Egyptian Arabic that Benmamoun adduces (2000: 81): (8.6)

Omar ma-katab-š ig-gawaab Omar neg-write.past.3ms-neg the-letter ‘Omar didn’t write the letter’

If the object is pronominal, however, the negative marker -š affixes to it and not to the verb: (8.7) a. ʿumar katab-u Omar wrote-it ‘Omar wrote it’ b. ʿumar ma-katab-hū-š Omar not-wrote-it-š ‘Omar didn’t write it’ What is more, when the valence of the verb extends to two pronominal objects, the -š affixes to the outermost of those, it being affixed not to the verb but to a dative 20 Another of the goals of formal linguistics is to construct a grammar that can generate all possible sentences in a language and none that are impossible.

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preposition. This holds for Moroccan and Egyptian Arabics and presumably all across the North African littoral: (8.8)

a. ma-kteb-hom li-š not-wrote-he-them to-me ‘He didn’t write it for me, to me’ b. ma-te-ʿt·iw-eh lu-š not-you.pl-give-it to-him ‘Don’t give it to him’ (Harrell 1965/2010: 152)

In the presence of a pronominal object and a nominal, the -š moves back to the affixed pronoun, regardless of whether it is the beneficiary or the patient that is pronominal: (8.9)

a. ma-t-iddi l-hā-š ig-gawāb not-you-give to-her-š the-letter ‘Don’t give to her the book’ b. ma- t-iddi-hū-š li-nādya not-you-give-it-š to-name ‘Don’t give it to Nadia’

In southern Levantine varieties (and those spoken in the mountain hinterlands of Beirut) negating with -š, however, the usual structure being a double accusative, the pronominal patient, affixed to the pronominal object marker yā-, is unable to host the negative marker: (8.10)

a. aʿt·ī-ni yā-h give-me yā-it ‘Give me it’ b. ma ta-ʿt·i-nī-š not you-give-me ‘Don’t give me it’

yā-h yā-it

In the dative construction, uncommon in Levantine varieties, the -š remains affixed to the suffixed pronoun, even though that pronoun has now become the patient; they are in this regard quite unlike North African varieties of Arabic, including the Egyptian: (8.11)

a. aʿt·ī-ha la-il-i give-it to-to-me ‘Give it to me’ b. ma ta-ʿt·i-hā-š la-il-i not you-give-it to-to-me ‘Don’t give it to me’

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Structures like these must surely be amenable to formal theoretical explications,21 but it seems that whether, in the parlance of formal linguistics, the NegP is lower, as Benmamoun (2000) and Aoun et al. (2010) would have it, or higher, as Soltan (2011b; 2012a; 2012b)—among others—wishes to place it,22 with two pronominal objects the entire structure must ‘merge’, while with one pronominal object and one nominal, the merger only affects parts of the structure. The same holds true in Levantine varieties for two pronominal objects regardless of the order in which they come, and it holds true in all cases whether the verb is in the past or the present.23 Considerations of tense become immaterial in Moroccan Arabic, when ‘nouns and adjectives are also sometime prefixed with ma- and suffixed with -ši or -šay, e.g., makbir-ši “not big” ’ (Harrell 1965/2010: 155). Caubet shows the same phenomenon in context (1993b: 70): (8.12)

a. xt-ək qbīh·a sister-your mean soeur-toi méchante (‘Your sister is mean’) b. la, ma qbīh·a-š no not mean-š ‘Non, elle n’est pas méchante’ (‘No, she’s not mean’)

That such type of negation is markedly polemic, as Caubet asserts, does not change that the -š moves about and associates itself with all manner of utterances and parts of speech. Yet formal investigations, while noting that it generally appears on 21 Indeed, Benmamoun (2011–12) briefly treats the so-called nota accusativi as it operates in FA (there being iyyā-), even taking something of a diachronic perspective. Even so, his treatment is unsatisfactory, perhaps because of its brevity, and can be contested on several points. Foremost among those is the operational assumption that FA was once spoken natively as a first language, an assumption that Benmamoun calls ‘a trivial point’ (pp. 144, 149, n. 4); even if true, which is by no means certain, it is unclear what relevance that may have for the acquisition of modern grammars of vernacular Arabic. With that, Benmamoun begins his discussion of the nota accusativi with the rare FA phenomenon of a double accusative pronominal object construction, i.e. ʿat·ā-nī-hi ‘he gave me it’, apparently supposing that this was the original form of the construction. On the contrary, Gensler (1998: 270–2) argues persuasively that the original arrangement was one of two clitic-like object pronouns, only loosely bound to the verb. Aside from that, Benmamoun’s cursory analysis of iyyā- as an object marker disregards its many other functions within the language, notably the demonstrative (explicated in Wilmsen 2013b), that provide good reason for supposing that its development as an object marker, probably not its original role, began with a presentative/demonstrative function (Wilmsen 2013a; 2013c: 154–61). Such considerations do not vitiate a purely synchronic analysis of how the Arabic nota accusativi operates in the syntax of living dialects of the language, but they would have added explanatory power to Benmamoun’s account. 22 See Alsarayreh (2012: 45–8) for formal diagrams and examples, and for the concepts ‘Low NegP Hypothesis’ and ‘High NegP Hypothesis’. 23 The prohibitive form in (8.10b) and (8.11b) is not strictly a tense, but the same sort of negation must occur in the indicative (also not technically a tense) and the perfect: mā ʿat·anīš yāha and mā ʿat·ahāš la ili, respectively ‘He didn’t give me it’ and ‘He didn’t give it to me.’

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the edge of the phrase, do not go on to consider the implications this holds. This is unfortunate, for this behaviour of -š together with its interrogative origin cast into doubt all discussions of the NegP relationship to tense. Even from a purely formal perspective, the tense relationships are not so orderly as Benmamoun or Aoun et al. would have them to be. Soltan (2011b; 2012a and 2012b) provides counter-examples from Egyptian Arabic and the schematics with which to buttress his contention that the entire phrase must be considered the head of NegP, observing that, contrary to the assertion that negating the past tense with the independent preposed negator miš is ungrammatical, in the Egyptian dialects from the Sharqeyyah governorate such usage is perfectly acceptable: (8.13)

a. *ʕumar miš katab Omar neg wrote.3sgm ‘Omar did not write the letter’

ʔil-gawaab the-letter (Aoun et al. 2010: 30)

b. ʔanaa miš ləʕib-t (Sharqeyyah Egyptian Arabic) I negplayed.perf.1sg ‘I did not play’ (Soltan 2011b: 243, 262; 2012a: 119) Nor is the principle as stated in Benmamoun and Aoun et al. (2010: 29–30) that the present tense may be negated with miš as straightforward as it seems. As discussed in Chapter 7, and as Brustad (2000: 285, n. 3) and Doss (2008) have noted, such usage appears to indicate a change in progress (in Cairene Arabic), whereby indicative verbs that were erstwhile negated with mā . . . š exclusively (metalinguistic negation notwithstanding) are now, with some speakers (far from all, and women more often than men), optionally negating indicative verbs with the alternative miš. Nor are all verbs amenable to such negation, the practice being confined to a limited subset of indicative expressions, most often involving the verb ‘to like/love’ biyh·ibb.24 Whatever the case, the interrogative origin of the negator -š renders moot the entire question of tense; there is no merger taking place between the independent negator maši and the verbs or other elements of the phrase. True to its clitic property, when it is an adjective being queried, the -š affixes to it: kibīrš? ‘Is he old?’; when a verb, then it affixes to that: yiržaʿš? ‘Will he return?’; when a pseudo-verb it affixes to that: ʿandakš? ‘Do you have?’; and when a copular pronoun, now residually present in some varieties, it affixes to that: huwāš? Formal theorists appear to be especially confused about this aspect of interrogation. Ouhalla (2002: 304) is not even aware that this is what he is up against in the Moroccan relic waš < huwāš ‘Is it that?’(Chapter 5). 24 The semantic distinction between miš h·ābib ‘I don’t feel like’ and miš bah·ibb ‘I don’t like’ in itself illustrates the futility in the enterprise of attempting to construct formal descriptions of an autonomous syntax free of semantic considerations, leaving the latter for some time after the ‘spell-out’. With the verb h·abb ‘to like/love’ a purely syntactic description cannot predict the correct assignment of negation without considering the meanings of the utterances to be formed. The felicitous syntactic structure cannot be recruited ahead of the semantics of the utterance.

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As for negation of the copular interrogatives, Aoun et al. (2010) are unable to decide whether the copular negators are manifestations of agreement phenomena or whether they fit better with an incorporation account (pp. 107–10). Benmamoun finds it significant that some Gulf dialects, when forming the independent negator (i.e. the ‘non-merged’ variant), remain sensitive to gender, using mu (< mā hu) with masculine heads and mi (< mā hi) with feminine (2000: 80). Why that should be any more significant than the phenomenon in other dialects hosting the same independent negators with their being less sensitive to gender is not clear. The sensitivity to gender or lack of it, as in the following from a Druze dialect, should not have any effect on the argument: (8.14)

a. il-bint bi-hal-zalame mi radyane ˙ the-girl with-this-guy not ‘be it’ iši gibna w iši zatūn w iši sardīn ‘be it cheese, be it olives, be it sardines’ (example 3.18)

4. Polar interrogative: ‘it is’

> ‘is it?’ a. ši maʿak masāri = ‘is it that you have money?’ (example 3.8) ˙ b. maʿak flūs ši = ‘you have money, is it?’ (3.6) c. maʿak ši alf = ‘you have, is it, a thousand?’ (3.12a)

5.

Indefinite determiner: ‘is it?’ a. ši funduʾ ‘a hotel’ b. ši dawa ‘a medicine’ c. ši bastōna ‘a club’ (examples 3.5 a, b, and c)

> ‘a’

6. Negator: ‘is?’

> ‘not is’ (h(uw)(iy)a)ši? ! mā (h(uw)(iy)a)ši! ! mā h(ū)(ī)š ! m(u)(i)š ‘Is he/she/it?’ ! ‘He/she/it is not’ ! ‘He/she/it isn’t’ ! ‘isn’t’

Reanalysis of the polar interrogative ši is what produced the negator š. The process is cyclical but, by the evidence, does not conform to the Jespersen’s Cycle that some European languages may have undergone. Instead, it is a clear-cut example of the negative existential cycle proposed by Croft (1991). Ultimately, the facts conform to theory, but arriving at that requires allowing the facts to speak for themselves, without heroic attempts to force them into preordained theoretical constructs. In their various approaches, almost all studies into the

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phenomenon have up to now taken for granted that the discontinuous negation of Arabic must be like the French. In arriving at this erroneous conclusion, based purely in superficial similarity, they seem to take three more apparent truths for granted:  The Arabic dialects are late developments, more or less descended from FA, itself close to the original form.  They conform to general typological trends seen in the development of the European languages.  Those trends ipso facto exhibit qualities of language universals. A pernicious effect of such theoretical constructs is that they have delimited the kinds of conclusions that may be drawn about the history and development of the features of Arabic. Closer scrutiny of the functioning of those features, informed by a consideration of Arabic in its Semitic context, calls all of these into question. It has also illustrated the peril of assuming that these or any theoretical contexts must perforce hold when examining the facts of a language. Other than to the extent that constraints on the vocal apparatus and human cognition could delimit it, there is no reason why Arabic should necessarily behave like European languages or follow developmental pathways that those languages have followed. Insofar as it is possible, we must first determine how Arabic and all of its varieties actually function, and how those varieties developed along their various pathways before assigning them to typological categories. In pursuing such a line of inquiry, a clear hierarchy of linguistic description and explanation emerges, with the study of individual idiolects and sociolects within a regional dialect, far from sanctioning generalizations about language universals, embodying only the first of many successive layers of explanation. The highest of those would be descriptions of language at the typological level, which by its nature involves comparisons between languages, and from which universals or near-universals may be deduced, if needed. Before those must come descriptions and explanations of the dialects of languages, followed by descriptions of and comparisons between those dialects and between languages in the broader families in which they are situated, themselves having begun as dialects of parent languages. Indeed, language typology studies cannot begin to approach complete explanations of language universals before language families are described adequately—an enterprise, when successfully pursued, requiring decades or even centuries of work (Gross 1979: 874). For example, in writing about the definite article in Central Semitic, Pat-El (2009) demonstrates that typological comparisons cannot account for all the data. Specifically, internal comparisons amongst languages within the Semitic family show that the origin of the definite article is not an attributive demonstrative,1 as 1 Pat-El (after Diessel 1999) defines an attributive demonstrative thus: ‘Attributive demonstratives occur with a coreferential noun, and pronominal demonstratives may syntactically substitute a noun.’

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speculations based in language typology would predict (and as argued e.g. in Heine and Kuteva 2002: 109–11). Instead, the Central Semitic article is derived from a nonpredicative particle, the presentative ha(n), itself and its precursors involved in the development of many grammatical functions. Conversely, explanations of features within individual languages are best accomplished in reference to and comparison with other languages in the same families. That is certainly true of an attempt to explain the origin and development of the negator -š; although individual studies provide useful observations about reflexes of ši, those studies have heretofore formed an incomplete description of their various functions and the processes that formed the reflexes, largely because they have attempted to explain the phenomena with reference to Arabic alone, without considering analogues in sister languages. Some studies have been highly speculative— those adopting a formal approach perhaps more so than those coming from more functional orientations, insofar as they base their explanations on superficial similarities and upon theoretical constructs developed for European languages, assuming that the facts of Arabic must of necessity fit the model. Several studies from both traditions also manage to approach the similarities between indefinite determiner ši, interrogative ši, and the negator š/ši. Yet all of them stop short of positing a unified explanation for all of these phenomena, other than asserting unequivocally and without reflection that -š in all its functions and manifestations derives from the FA šayʾun and finally stating outright that this must be an instance of a Jespersen’s Cycle. With the true origins of these functions uncovered, it remains only to account for the current distribution of interrogation and negation techniques utilizing reflexes of ši in the dialects in which they appear. Interrogatives formed with reflexes of ši are much more widely spread than are negators formed with them, the former appearing across the entire Arabophone world whereas the latter are found in some of its western dialects only. That by itself indicates the great age and originality of the interrogative š. In both eastern and western varieties of Arabic, variations of the interrogative aš appear,2 and in many of those, both east and west, other interrogatives are constructed with /š/ and a substantive, in what Versteegh (2004) calls ‘periphrastic’ interrogatives.3 Their origins are in the polar interrogatives formed from an existential ši. The basic interrogative aš—being the Arabic interrogative ʾa, itself derived from the presentative ša > ha, and the existential particle ši or ‘is’, together forming an interrogative ‘what is?’—already involves some periphrasis. This and another basic interrogative lāš ‘why?’ (or ʿlaš in North Africa), shared by most dialects of Arabic, must be early Proto-Arabic features. Other interrogatives

2 3

See the table in Versteegh (2004: 244) and the map and tables in Obler (1975: 48, 54–5; 1990: 138–43). The Egyptian forms of these, ēh, ʾaddiēh, and lēh, are likely to have undergone a sound change š > h.

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involving aš may be almost as old, representing separate developments in the older dialects of Arabic, or they may be later, having arisen in dialects of the diaspora. Negation with -š, being widespread but without reaching across the entire Arabophone world as it is currently configured, in the wider view presented here, may originally have extended throughout the western Arabian Peninsula and Fertile Crescent. There is reason to believe that this was an innovation in the southern dialects of Arabic brought to the Fertile Crescent before the arrival of Arabicspeaking Muslims in the 7th century ad. The number of dialects spoken in this vast area before and at the time cannot be known any more than the amount of variation between them can be, but by the 7th century ad, two distinct dialect groupings can be envisioned: the ‘eastern’ dialects actually originating in the central peninsula and eastward from there, negating without -š, and the ‘western’ dialects from the south and west of the peninsula, reaching northward into the Syrian steppes, where, depending on the local variety, an existential, indefinite, interrogative, and a negator built upon reflexes of /š/ remain operable in the various dialects spoken in the area. According to this scenario, those are likely to have been present before the 7th century ad, perhaps for as long as a millennium and a half, but certainly present around the time that Arabic-speaking Muslims arrived. With the spread of Islam throughout the entire region, including the Levant and Mesopotamia, speakers of varieties from the two broad regional divisions would have come into closer contact in the urban centres of the new religion. In its turn, this would have engendered a rearrangement of the prevalent social order, with the older elites, most of them who had become Christians by the 7th century ad, losing their elevated position in society in favour of the new elites arriving with the new religion from the heartlands of the Peninsula. The new ruling elites were Hijāzis, but their military lieutenants, comprising the second tier of elites in the new order, along with the forces they commanded, would have included contingents of central Arabians, speakers of eastern dialects. The Arabic speakers already present in the lands of the newly emerging Muslim Arab empire, as well as those acquiring Arabic as a second or third language, would have imitated the speech of the new elites. Arabic speakers whose dialects retained the reflexes of ši used in negation could have lost that feature in less than a generation, their adaptation to another system of negation eased considerably by the similarity of the function between the two dialect groupings, both systems, after all, negating with mā.4 Nor has the technique completely vanished from the Fertile Crescent, remaining as a characteristic of the speech of the inhabitants of the southern Levant, the highlands

4 I have experienced such a loss in my own lifetime, having begun learning my vernacular Arabic in the Jordanian Hōrān, after that, living in Egypt for fourteen years, acquiring and using -š as an obligatory ˙ negator, but losing much of the tendency to negate with -š within five years of moving to Beirut, where the feature is somewhat stigmatized.

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of Lebanon, the Damascus hinterlands, and dialect isolates northward and eastwards of the city (see Fig. 7.3). The urban spaces in these areas were never centres of power or high culture of the Islamic world, despite the importance of the southern Levantine city of Jerusalem in Muslim ideology, and the highlands were remote and isolated, the refuge of minority religious sects, while the Hōrān has been since ancient ˙ times the retreat of dissidents, rebels, and brigands. All were at some time removed from the mainstream of Arab Muslim culture. Older, unsophisticated vernaculars would be expected to remain in such relatively isolated outposts. The modern Arabic dialects in all the major centres of Arab Muslim power of the early Muslim era, Mecca, Damascus, and Baghdad, do not negate with -š, reflecting the central Arabian dialects of the Muslim elites who established their capitals there, those dialects negating with a preposed mā alone. What is more, the dialect islands in the Syrian steppe, where negation with -š is optional, look to be precisely what would be expected in a geography where a major dialect change had taken place: remote island holdouts that the change had passed over. Viewing them otherwise leaves unanswered the question as to how it came to be that these isolates acquired the negation technique. Considering them relics of earlier dialect groupings that were at one time in place in the same geography neatly solves that conundrum. The technique of negation with -š may be an old feature pre-dating Islam, present in dialects of the western Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent. Or it may have been an innovation developing in dialects of southern origin in place in the Syrian steppes and the Levant some time just before or just after the arrival of Arabicspeaking Muslims. Whichever it turns out to be, it is neither a development nor a descendant of the language of elocutionary utterances that was to become the language of writing. This perspective on the facts runs counter to the prevailing wisdom on the subject, but it is supported with the evidence remaining in those various dialects, living and extinct, in which the technique is or was practised. Meanwhile, the conventional view is largely built upon suppositions based in superficial appearances. For that matter, the reflexes of grammatical ši in their various forms bear closer resemblance to their proto-Semitic presentative/demonstrative/3rd person pronoun precursors than they do to their supposed precursor from FA. The remarkable cross-dialectal similarity of the basic interrogative speaks to a common origin more easily than it does to a hypothetical series of individual changes in each dialect all converging on a similar point. That common origin is likely to be as old as the differentiation of the Arabic language from West Semitic, meaning that the dialects retaining those features are ancient and cannot realistically be labelled Neo-Arabic.

Appendix: Points of divergence between written and spoken Arabic I. Interrogation

A. Written Arabic

mā huwa? māðā ya-ktub?

‘What is he?’ ‘What does he write?’

B. Spoken Arabic

šū huwa ? šū bi-yi-ktib ?

‘What is he?’ ‘What does he write?’

Variants
aš/āš/ayš/ēš/iš ?
šūwe/š- ?
šīnu/šnu/šnuwa ?
aššu/ašin/ašnu ? II. Verbal negation

A. Written Arabic

lā ya-ktub-u (pres) ‘He does not write’ lan ya-ktub-a (fut) ‘He will not write’ lam ya-ktub (past) ‘He did not write’ All are imperfect moods.

Variant

mā kān ya-ktub (restricted)

B. Spoken Arabic 1 Syro-Mesopotamian and Peninsular Arabic: mā bi-yi-ktib

(pres)

‘He doesn’t write’

mā ha-yi-ktib ˙ mā katab

(fut)

‘He won’t write’

(past)

‘He didn’t write’

2 Southern Levant, North Africa, Yemen: mā bi-yi-ktib-š (pres) miš ha-yi-ktib (fut) ˙ mā katab-š (past) All three tenses.

‘He doesn’t write’ ‘He won’t write’ ‘He didn’t write’

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Remarks:


The two systems diverge only slightly in the verb. But the interrogatives come from different systems or sources within a system.




Almost all dialects share an interrogative feature in common: the /š/ sound. Even Egyptian Arabic interrogatives, which for the most part do not exhibit it except in fossilized remnants, are derived from forms having had a /š/. The /l/ in lā is shared by the dialects in the word itself, meaning ‘no’ and in some dialects with prohibitives: lā ti-ktib ‘Don’t write’ (cf. written Arabic: lā ta-ktub). More common in the dialects is the prohibitive formed with mā: mā ti-ktib or mā ti-ktib-š. The common Semitic interrogative mā appears to have been reanalysed as a negator early in the prehistory of Arabic, but in writing it has always been of restricted usage. In modern writing it is almost entirely restricted to negating the verb ‘to be’ (kān) in the past tense, and then only under certain conditions, mainly in the apodosis of conditional sentences.







III. Predicate negation

A. Written Arabic

B. Spoken Arabic

laysa kātiban mā huwa bi-kātibin Southern Levant, Egypt ! Algeria: miš kātib Yemen, Morocco: māši kātib Syro-Mesopotamia, Arabian Peninsula: mannu kātib/mū kātib/mūb kātib, etc

‘He is not a writer’ ‘He is not a writer’ ‘He is not a writer’ ‘He is not a writer’ ‘He is not a writer’

Remarks:








The two systems share some grammatical markers; but they employ them differently. In older writing, mā and laysa appear together; the two are not mutually exclusive. Some dialects retain a reflex of laysa.

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Index adequacy, descriptive and explanatory 9, 12, 186–8, 191–2, 198, 205–6, 210 ʿAdnān 131–3 Afroasiatic 27–8, 118, 154, 158 agreement deflected 31–4 strict 32–4 Akkadian 12, 28, 157, 161–2, 166, 185 Algerian Arabic indefinite ši 59 negator –š 59, 117 Anatolian dialects 124, 127–8, 149 ʿand, see pseudo-verb Andalusi Arabic copular interrogative 69–70, 81, 89 Granadan dialect 67, 69–71, 87 indefinite ši 67–8 interrogative iš 10, 72–9, 83–7, 89 negative polarity item 149 negator iš 10, 70–6, 78–9, 82–5, 89 negator –š/ši 68–9, 149 oblique pronouns 38 wh- exclamative iš 79–81, 83, 85 annexation, improper 29–30 Arabistan 135 Aramaic 31, 37, 78, 132, 137, 141, 151, 155, 159, 176, 185 Arcipreste de Hita, see Ruiz, Juan Assyrian 37–8, 134, 138, 141 Azd 130, 133, 142 Babylonian 155, 185 Baghdadi Arabic 74, 129, 184, 192, 212; see also Iraqi Arabic Bahrain/Bah·ārna 142–4 Beirut Arabic; see also Lebanese Arabic negator ʾa 61–2, 152–3 negator –š/ši 61, 150

bidd-, see pseudo-verb bidd-š, see pseudo-verb borrowing 28, 35, 125, 141, 153, 170–1 Bus·rā 134–5 Cairo Arabic (Cairene) 16, 27, 32, 34, 146; see also Egyptian Arabic deflected agreement 32 discontinuous mā . . . š 39–40 indefinite šī 65–6 negative polarity items 199–203 negator –š 39–40, 204 post-positive –š 42, 102 pseudo-verb bidd- 48, 151 verbal negation with miš 174–5, 196 central Arabian dialects 127, 130–1, 140, 143–4, 149, 207, 212 Christian Arabs 128, 133–5, 142, 212 classical Arabic 9, 23–4, 26–8, 35, 50, 65–7, 86, 117, 138, 141, 160, 181–2, 184, 186, 189–90; see also FA (fus·h·ā Arabic) clitic 1, 152–3, 158, 166, 196, 198, 203 copula interrogative 10, 81, 90, 92, 94–6, 97–100, 119, 165, 191, 196–7; see also interrogative, huwāš negator 69–70, 72, 88–91, 95, 100–1, 110, 115, 178, 197; see also negator, mā hu(wā)š and mā hi(yā)š Croft’s cycle 12, 173–6, 209 Cypriot Maronite Arabic 127, 149–51 Damascus Arabic; see also Syrian Arabic deflected agreement 32 demonstratives 36 interrogative š/ši 15, 123 negator mā . . . š 128 dative 193–4

240

Index

degrammaticalization 4, 12, 167–9, 171 demonstrative 11–13, 28, 35–9, 155–8, 160–9, 171, 209–10, 213 determiner, see indefinite dialect, defined 18–19 discontinuous morpheme mā . . . š 1–3, 9, 15, 39, 41, 71, 100, 105, 117–18, 121, 128, 151, 154, 170, 174–5, 193, 196–7, 199, 202, 206 Druze 11, 15, 103–5, 133, 197 eastern Arabic 12, 16, 74, 91, 139, 144, 152, 168, 176–7, 179, 185, 211–12; see also western Arabic Egyptian Arabic copular interrogative 97–9 copular negator 100–1 existential iši 60, 124 indefinite ši 52, 60, 65, 124 in situ interrogation 183 interrogative iš 76–7 interrogative –š 56–7, 76–8, 93, 215 negative polarity items 202–3 negator –š/ši 50, 57–9, 93, 100–1, 193–4, 204 oblique pronouns 38 verbal negation with miš 174–5, 196 elites, Arab 134, 137, 140, 152, 154, 212 Ethiopic 37 exclamatives 77, 80–1, 83, 85, 191 existential particle ši 10–12, 54, 122–4, 141, 145–6, 148, 152, 161, 165–7, 169–73, 176–7, 211 modern South Arabian śī 124–6, 171; see also individual dialects FA (fus·h·ā Arabic) 26–7, 31–2, 34, 36–7, 39, 42, 45–51, 63–4, 69, 76, 82, 89, 116, 118, 129, 141, 147, 149, 158, 167–70, 177–8, 185–7, 195, 199, 209, 211, 213 al-Farrāʾ 41, 154 Fertile Crescent multilingual communities 134, 136–7, 140 post-7th century AD 128, 131–2, 144, 149, 212

pre-diaspora Arab presence 11, 13, 24–5, 36, 64, 130–42, 145–6, 211–12 fī, see pseudo-verb fīš, see pseudo-verb foederati 133–5 formal linguistics 6–9, 12, 103, 180–1, 184–8, 190, 192–3, 195–9, 202–8, 211; see also functional linguistics formulaic usage 60, 76–7, 109, 114; see also idiomatic usage French, negation in 3, 9, 41–2, 64, 117, 168, 176, 190, 199, 209; see also Jespersen’s Cycle functional linguistics 6–9, 184–5, 188, 197, 204, 206–8, 211; see also formal linguistics Geʿez 37–8, 168, genitive exponent 50, 141, 161–2, 169 Ghassanids 130, 132–6 gilit dialects, see qeltu and gilit dialects Gindubu 137–8 Golan Heights 102–3, 116, 134 grammatical marker 40, 45, 51, 118, 154, 163–5, 203 /š/ or ši 2, 9–11, 13, 51, 64, 118–19, 126–7, 142, 145, 154–5, 161, 166, 169, 188, 190, 209, 213 grammaticalization ši 3–4, 7–10, 12, 40, 43–5, 50–1, 147, 151 theory 3–4, 7–8, 12, 40, 51, 153, 162–5, 168, 171, 181 unidirectionality 4, 12, 164–5, 168; see also degrammaticalization Hassaniyya Arabic 197 Hebrew 15, 28, 31, 69, 78, 125, 134, 155, 159, 166, 167, 176, 184 Hōrāni Arabic 11, 102–10 ˙ copular interrogative 92–3 copular negator 110 indefinite ši 56 interrogative –š/ši 56

Index negative polarity items 201–3 negator –š 69, 105–10, 127, 206 Hōrān Plateau 11, 56, 133 ˙ Ibn ʿĀs·im 70–1, 75, 77, 82, 84, 86–7, 90, 92, 100, 119, 124, 199 Ibn Quzmān 67, 73–5, 78–82, 85–6, 149 Ibn Sahl 74 Ibn Sūdūn 65, 77, 119 Ibn Wahb 65–6, 119 Ibn Xātima 69–71, 90, 92, 100, 119 Ibn Zamrak 69, 71, 119 idiomatic usage 109, 117 indefinite; see also individual dialects article 51–2 determiner 10, 12–13, 53–4, 56, 58–60, 63, 65–8, 118–19, 121, 124, 126–7, 129–39, 147–8, 152, 161–2, 165–73, 177–8, 181, 189, 192, 207, 209, 211 mā 189 pronoun 59, 157, 163, 168, 171 quantifier 50, 52–3, 60, 129 ši 56–60, 63, 65–8, 118–19, 121, 124, 129–30, 145–8, 152, 166, 169–73, 177–8, 181, 189, 192–3 śi 124, 126, 146, 148, 171 indirect questions, 50, 97, 111 innovation 2, 11, 25–6, 28–9, 31, 35, 38, 45, 50, 89, 96, 119–20, 124–6, 130, 144–5, 145–8, 151, 172, 176–7, 180, 189, 203, 211–12 interrogative; see also individual dialects ʾa 54, 118, 125, 152, 155, 166, 172, 176, 211 anāš/anīš 69–71, 75, 81, 88–92, 101, 165 ʾa . . . š 118 ʾaš (and its reflexes) 2, 10, 41, 60, 62, 70–82, 81–6, 88–9, 121, 148, 162, 166, 176, 178, 192, 211, 214 ʾayš or ayš 2, 10, 41, 74, 77, 86, 154, 170, 214 ʾayy 41, 166, 154, 170, 177 copular, see copula ēš 2, 10, 76–80, 83, 86, 88, 121, 149, 162, 214 huwāš 69–71, 81, 88–90, 95–8, 101, 165, 191, 196; see also interrogative, waš iš, see interrogative iš in Andalusi Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, and Jordanian Arabic

241

lāš 76, 86, 162, 167, 211 lēš 77, 83, 121, 148, 167 mā 2, 75, 79–80, 149, 176, 189, 214–15 minu 182–4 periphrastic (qaddāš, waqtāš, etc.) 2, 121, 162, 167, 178, 211 pronoun 77, 121, 163, 185, 192 polar, see polar interrogative š 2, 43, 92–3, 97, 109, 111, 113–15, 119, 166, 176, 190–1, 198, 207, 211 ši 53–7, 85, 95, 110–12, 115, 118, 120–7, 142, 146, 148, 158, 165–7, 169–70, 172–3, 176–9, 191–3, 207, 209, 211 waš 74–5, 80, 96–7, 190–1, 196 intrusive /n/ 143–4 Iraqi Arabic indefinite fard 129 in situ interrogation 181, 183 interrogative minu 181–4 interrogative –š/ši 192 Irbid 104, 116, 199, 201 Jespersen’s Cycle 3, 9, 12, 41–2, 44, 65, 70–2, 89, 115, 117, 151, 173, 181, 209, 211 Jordanian Arabic dialect diversity 127–9 interrogative iš 83 negative polarity items 201 negator ʾa 61 negator –š/ši 120, 127 yigūl, b@gūl, b@kūl, and b@ʾūl groups 128–9 al-Karak 199 al-Khirbeh, see Hōrāni Arabic ˙ Khorasan Arabic 143–4, 149 Kinda confederacy 131 Kitāb al-Aġāni 46–7, 74, 79, 109 Kurkh Monolith 137 labial consonants, see post-positive, negation of imperfect verbs Lakhmids 132, 134, 142 language acquisition 12, 185–8, 195, 206

242

Index

language typology 171, 175, 181, 210 language universals 5, 41–2, 116, 163, 184, 187, 206, 210 lateral shifts 164–5 Lebanese Arabic existential ši 123–4 indefinite ši 52–3, 56 interrogative ʾa 61–3, 153, 191 negator ʾa 61–3 negator –š 60–1, 127, 205 wh- exclamative 83, 191 Levantine Arabic; see also Lebanese Arabic, Jordanian Arabic, Palestinian Arabic, Syrian Arabic defined 15 genitive exponent šīt 161–2, 169 interrogative ʾa 109, 151–3 interrogative aš 76–8 interrogative –š/ši 57, 59 negative polarity items 199 negator –š/ši 127, 130, 150–3, 194–5, 205, 214–15 post-positive negation with –š 102 wh- exclamative 80 Libro de Buen Amor 75–6 Libyan Arabic copular negator 100–1 interrogative –š/ši 55 negative polarity items 201 negator –š/ši 59, 88, 100–1 Maʿan 133 Maghrebi Arabic, see Moroccan Arabic Malta, populating of 91, 96, 149–50 Maltese copular interrogative 90, 92, 96–100 indefinite ši 120 interrogative –š {x} 90, 94–5, 111 negative polarity item 149–50, 177 negator ma huš 90, 101, 176 negator –š {x} 90–1, 92, 95 polar interrogative 10 Maʾrib 130, 133 Maronite 127, 149–50, 161 Mecca 121, 212

Mehri 11–12, 124–6, 155, 159, 162, 166–7, 171 merge 188, 193, 195–8 metalinguistic negation 174–5, 196 Middle Arabic 22–4 minimalism 12, 181, 184, 189 Mixed Arabic 23–4 Modern South Arabian, see South Arabian, Modern Modern Standard Arabic 11, 185; see also FA (fus·h·ā Arabic) Moroccan Arabic copular interrogative 74, 96–8, 190–1, 196 copular negator 100–1 existential 120 indefinite ši 51–2, 59, 181, 189–90 interrogative /š/ 72, 77–8, 190 negative polarity items 198–203 negator –š/ši 43, 50, 58–9, 72, 86–8, 100–1, 181, 194–5, 215 MSA, see South Arabian, Modern; for Modern Standard Arabic, see FA (fus·h·ā Arabic) Nabataeans 134–5, 138–40 negation with –š; see also negator paradigm 40, 214–15 negative-existential cycle, see Croft’s Cycle negative implicature 56, 74–6, 81, 83, 85, 93, 112–14, 115 negative polarity 42, 49, 114, 149, 170, 198–9, 202–4, 206 negator; see also individual dialects ʾa 61–2, 104–5, 107–9, 118, 121, 151–4, 173 ʾa . . . š 15, 61, 107, 118, 121, 152–4 copular, see copula laysa, las, and lis 47 68–9, 76, 81–3, 86–7, 141, 215 mā hi(yā)š 101, 150, 173, 178 mā hu 148, 173, 178, 197 mā hu(wā)š 40, 88, 90–1, 95, 100–1, 110 mā ši (or māšī) 103, 122, 130, 172–3, 193, 196, 206, 215 mi 178, 185, 197 miš 40, 103, 105, 129, 150, 173–6, 178, 196, 206, 214–15

Index mu 60, 129, 178, 197, 215 muš 101, 173, 178, 206 ši 10, 56–7, 66, 119–21, 127, 158, 192–3 –š 49–50, 66, 69, 72, 86–7, 89, 118, 149–53, 158, 170, 196 Neo-Arabic 22, 24–6, 28, 170, 179, 213 North African Arabic 1–3, 10–12, 16, 29, 50, 58–9, 71–2, 87, 91, 95–6, 100, 127, 129–30, 167, 176–7, 194, 198, 207; see also Algerian Arabic, Andalusi Arabic, Libyan Arabic, Maltese, Moroccan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic object, pronominal 44–5, 106, 158, 193, 194–5 Old Arabic 22–6, 36, 170 Omani Arabic copular negator 69, 71–2, 88–9, 100–1 existential ši 122–4, 140 intrusive [n] 143–4 negator –š 115, 120–1, 124, 130, 140 Palestinian Arabic copular negator 100–1 negation with ʾa 61, 118 negator –š/ši 40, 60–1, 88, 100–2, 118, 127, 206–7 oblique pronouns 38 post-positive negation with –š 40, 60–1, 102 Palmyra 120, 133, 137–8, 153 partitive 10, 51–3, 56–7, 60, 125, 142, 71 peripheral varieties 15, 37, 89, 143, 149–50, 176 Petra 134–5, 137, 139 Phoenician 31 polar interrogative –š/ši 10, 53, 63, 85, 110, 125, 142, 250, 163, 172, 176–8, 209, 211 question 54–5, 83, 85, 97, 114–15, 170, 172, 176–8, 190, 192 polemic negation 100, 195, 200; see also metalinguistic negation post-positive negation 42, 101–2, 104–8, 147, 149, 198, 207 negation of imperfect verbs (nonlabials) 62–3, 93, 104, 106–7, 109, 115, 151

243

negation of perfect verbs 93, 102, 104–6, 111–13, 115–17 –š 42, 63, 69, 71, 89, 93, 95, 102, 105–10, 114–18, 149–50, 206 pre-diaspora Arabic 14, 25, 29, 36, 115, 130, 144, 148–9, 179 presentative 157, 161, 165–6, 169, 171, 209, 213 prohibitive 60–1, 62, 69, 107, 117, 195; see also post-positive pronoun 3rd person 32–3, 37–9, 97–100, 154–5, 157–62, 167–71, 177, 209, 213 demonstrative 35–6, 155–64, 166, 169, 171 indefinite, see indefinite pronouns personal 37–9, 89, 100, 155–6, 161–3 relative 157–8 Semitic 154–5, 157–62, 169 protoArabic 14, 16–17, 141, 147–8, 167, 173, 176–9 language 13–14, 17, 19, 188 Semitic 13, 17, 25, 27–8, 37, 126, 141, 144–5, 155, 158, 160–1, 165–6, 169, 177 proverb 70, 72–3, 75, 77, 82–8, 90, 92, 119, 124 pseudo-verb ʿand 40, 53, 55–61, 102, 104–6, 108, 110–17, 172–3, 196, 201 ʿand-š(i) 40, 53, 55–8, 60–1, 96, 102, 104–6, 108, 110–17, 172–3, 196 bidd- 1, 40, 45–50, 60–3, 105–9, 118, 121, 129, 151–2; see also wuddbidd-š 1, 15, 40, 44–7, 61, 63, 106, 108–9, 117–18, 121, 129, 151–2 fī 40, 57–8, 61–2, 106, 123, 177 fīš 57, 61–2, 105–6, 108, 117 interrogation 56–7, 93, 110–12, 172, 196 negation 40, 57, 61–2, 102, 104–5, 108, 110, 112, 115–17, 129, 170, 172–3 Qah·Tān 131–3 qaTT 149–50 qeltu and gilit dialects 127–8, 149

244

Index

reanalysis bdd- 44–8, 151–2 defined 8–9 indefinite determiner 172, 177–8 interrogative 115, 152, 172, 177–8, 209 negator 49, 59, 72, 110, 115, 146, 151–2, 170, 178–9, 197–8, 211 šayʾ (šay or –š) 44–5, 49–50, 57, 59, 115, 126, 151–2, 169, 172 reduced cleft constructions 181–3 retention 17, 25, 28–9, 36, 39, 92–100 rhetorical negative 56, 74–6, 80, 94, 178–9, 203; see also negative implicature question 74–6, 78–9, 80–1, 85, 123 Ruiz, Juan 75–6 SalTi Arabic 61, 127, 129; see also Jordanian Arabic Sanʿānī Arabic 88, 100, 122, 125, 130 ˙ šayʾ 3, 9, 12, 40–1, 44–7, 49–51, 65–6, 89, 122, 124, 142, 151, 190, 195, 209; see also ‘thing’ Semitic Central 11, 14, 31, 126, 145, 147, 155, 171, 176, 178 demonstrative 35, 156, 164 213 East 12, 28, 37–38, 154–5 language(s) 4–5, 11–13, 17, 19, 25, 27, 29, 37–9, 118, 126, 138, 144–6, 155, 157, 160, 162, 164–81, 184–6, 189, 210 Northwest 3, 31 proto-Semitic, see protoWest 11–12, 14, 28, 31, 37–8, 124, 126, 144, 154–5, 160–1, 167, 171, 173, 178, 213 Sībawayhi 205 al-Širbīnī 119–20 Soqotri 124–5 Soukhne 36, 120, 151, 153 sound correspondences 37, 97, 155, 157–8, 160–2, 165–6, 211 South Arabian features in Andalusi Arabic 131 Modern 11–12, 124–7, 141, 145–6, 155, 170–1

Old 37, 145 southern Arabia 11, 16, 121, 127, 130–2, 134, 138, 141–2, 144–6 Sprachinsel varieties 144, 146, 149–50 standard Arabic 22, 117–18, 185–6, 189–90; see also FA (fus·h·ā Arabic) al-Šuštarī 67–8, 70–1, 86, 119 Syriac 31, 159 Syrian Arabic existential ši 123–6 indefinite ši 51–2 interrogative aš 77 interrogative –š/ši 54–6, 123 negation with ʾa 61, 152–3 negator –š/ši 40, 60, 120, 127–9, 150–1, 205, 211–12 oblique pronouns 38 post-positive negation with –š 40 al-Taʿālibī 30–1, 41, 154 Tanūkhids 133–5, 142 ‘thing’ 3–4, 7, 9–10, 12, 40, 50, 55, 57–8, 118, 126, 154, 161, 163, 167–71, 173 Tigre and Tigrinya 37 Tihāma 68, 130, 141–2, 145 Tunisian Arabic copular interrogative 95–7, 114 copular negator 100–1 interrogative –š/ši 55, 95–7, 111–15 negative polarity items 199–203 negator –š/ši 100–1, 112, 207 unidirectionality, see grammaticalization Uzbek Arabic 12, 127, 143–4, 149–50, 178 variable 190–3 vernacular, defined 18 western Arabic 11–13, 16, 87, 130, 149, 154, 168, 176–7, 179, 211–12; see also eastern Arabic wh- exclamatives, see exclamatives and individual dialects wudd- 46–8; see also pseudo-verb

Index Yemeni Arabic copular negator 100 existential ši 122–6, 142 indefinite ši 58, 161 interrogative –š/ši 53, 122, 148, 191 intrusive [n] 143–4 medieval writers’ conception 11, 13, 179

245

negator las/lis 68, 141 negator mā ši 130, 173, 206, 215 negator –š 1, 13, 50, 120–2, 130, 214 yes/no question 50, 53–5, 83, 85, 110, 121, 166, 179; see also polar question al-Zajjālī 72–3, 75, 84, 87

OXFORD STUDIES

IN

DIACHRONIC

AND

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

General editors Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts, University of Cambridge Advisory editors Cynthia Allen, Australian National University; Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, University of Manchester; Theresa Biberauer, University of Cambridge; Charlotte Galves, University of Campinas; Geoff Horrocks, University of Cambridge; Paul Kiparsky, Stanford University; Anthony Kroch, University of Pennsylvania; David Lightfoot, Georgetown University; Giuseppe Longobardi, University of York; David Willis, University of Cambridge Published 1 From Latin to Romance Morphosyntactic Typology and Change Adam Ledgeway 2 Parameter Theory and Linguistic Change Edited by Charlotte Galves, Sonia Cyrino, Ruth Lopes, Filomena Sandalo, and Juanito Avelar 3 Case in Semitic Roles, Relations, and Reconstruction Rebecca Hasselbach 4 The Boundaries of Pure Morphology Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives Edited by Silvio Cruschina, Martin Maiden, and John Charles Smith 5 The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean Volume I: Case Studies Edited by David Willis, Christopher Lucas, and Anne Breitbarth 6 Constructionalization and Constructional Changes Elizabeth Traugott and Graeme Trousdale 7 Word Order in Old Italian Cecilia Poletto 8 Diachrony and Dialects Grammatical Change in the Dialects of Italy Edited by Paola Benincà, Adam Ledgeway, and Nigel Vincent 9 Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages Edited by Chiara Ghezzi and Piera Molinelli 10 Vowel Length from Latin to Romance Michele Loporcaro

11 The Evolution of Functional Left Peripheries in Hungarian Syntax Edited by Katalin É. Kiss 12 Syntactic Reconstruction and Proto-Germanic George Walkden 13 The History of Low German Negation Anne Breitbarth 14 Arabic Indefinites, Interrogatives, and Negators A Linguistic History of Western Dialects David Wilmsen In preparation Syntax over Time Lexical, Morphological, and Information-Structural Interactions Edited by Theresa Biberauer and George Walkden Variation and Change in the Syntax of Portuguese Relative Clauses Adriana Cardoso Negation and Nonveridicality in the History of Greek Katerina Chatzopoulou The Syntax of Old Romanian Edited by Gabriela Pană Dindelegan Nominal Expressions and Language Change From Early Latin to Modern Romance Giuliana Giusti The Historical Dialectology of Arabic: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Approaches Edited by Clive Holes A Study in Grammatical Change The Modern Greek Weak Subject Pronoun τος and its Implications for Language Change and Structure Brian D. Joseph Gender from Latin to Romance Michele Loporcaro Participles in Rigvedic Sanskrit The Syntax and Semantics of Adjectival Verb Forms John J. Lowe Quantitative Historical Linguistics Barbara McGillivray and Gard Jenset Syllable and Segment in Latin Ranjan Sen Syntactic Change and Stability Joel Wallenberg The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean Volume II: Patterns and Processes Edited by David Willis, Christopher Lucas, and Anne Breitbarth