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Terms of endearment and anger in Levantine Arabic

Praying for and against someone
  • Mohammad A. Mohammad
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Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXVI
This chapter is in the book Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXVI

Abstract

This article provides a detailed description of a specific structure in Arabic referred to as “God-wishes” by Fergusson (1997). In spite of their singular third person agreement features, the article argues that they are actually imperatives in disguise. Evidence supporting this conclusion is cited across the paper. The data described is derived from hundreds of hours of television series in Levantine Arabic broadcast in Ramadan over the last fifteen or so years.

Abstract

This article provides a detailed description of a specific structure in Arabic referred to as “God-wishes” by Fergusson (1997). In spite of their singular third person agreement features, the article argues that they are actually imperatives in disguise. Evidence supporting this conclusion is cited across the paper. The data described is derived from hundreds of hours of television series in Levantine Arabic broadcast in Ramadan over the last fifteen or so years.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. The development of future participles and future tense markers from motion predicates 9
  5. Yod-dropping in b-imperfect verb forms in Amman 29
  6. Syntax
  7. Prosodic constituency and locality in Levantine Arabic 47
  8. Negation and the subject position in San’ani Arabic 75
  9. Splitting Neg: 91
  10. Multiple agreement in Arabic 121
  11. Cyclic AGREE derives restrictions on cliticization in classical Arabic 135
  12. Phonology
  13. Secondary stress exist in Cairene Arabic? 163
  14. Paradoxical paradigms! Evidence from Lebanese Arabic phonology 185
  15. Sociolinguistics
  16. The Arabic of Bukhara 213
  17. Semantic/Pragmatics
  18. Terms of endearment and anger in Levantine Arabic 243
  19. Language acquisition
  20. On the L1 development of final consonant clusters in Cairene Arabic 263
  21. Neurolinguistics
  22. Neurocognitive modeling of the two language varieties in Arabic Diglossia 285
  23. Index 303
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.2.16moh

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. The development of future participles and future tense markers from motion predicates 9
  5. Yod-dropping in b-imperfect verb forms in Amman 29
  6. Syntax
  7. Prosodic constituency and locality in Levantine Arabic 47
  8. Negation and the subject position in San’ani Arabic 75
  9. Splitting Neg: 91
  10. Multiple agreement in Arabic 121
  11. Cyclic AGREE derives restrictions on cliticization in classical Arabic 135
  12. Phonology
  13. Secondary stress exist in Cairene Arabic? 163
  14. Paradoxical paradigms! Evidence from Lebanese Arabic phonology 185
  15. Sociolinguistics
  16. The Arabic of Bukhara 213
  17. Semantic/Pragmatics
  18. Terms of endearment and anger in Levantine Arabic 243
  19. Language acquisition
  20. On the L1 development of final consonant clusters in Cairene Arabic 263
  21. Neurolinguistics
  22. Neurocognitive modeling of the two language varieties in Arabic Diglossia 285
  23. Index 303
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